Enlightened Empire

Chapter 373: The Morning After

The next morning, the world had changed. Though if one were to look at the empty streets of Saniya, no one would think so.

After a night of chaos, the city had finally calmed down again. After all, its people had just spent several days eating and drinking themselves stupid. And after that, they still went crazy over the miracle they had witnessed. Whatever energy they had left over, they expended by running through the streets and spreading the miracle message to everyone they saw.

Plus, these weren’t modern people. Without good options for artificial lighting, most would go to bed shortly after nightfall. They weren’t used to staying up too late. As a result, despite yesterday’s excitement, today was a lazy day for the entire city, which gave the cleaning crews ample time to remove the messes that had been caused yesterday. Though not only the cleaners were busy, the police also had to handle a fair few number of cases.

Although Corco was tired as well, he still got up while most of his subjects were sleeping off their enthusiasm. The next few days wouldn’t be quite as important as the last one, but they would still require his attention if he wanted to properly make use of his advantage. Seated in his study, he first read the police reports from the previous night.

Thus, he slowly read about all the horrible things his people had been up to in last night’s excitement. For the most part, the citizens had been surprisingly well-behaved. They had limited their expression of joy to some minor looting, as well as one major fire that had been extinguished before it could spread to any other buildings. The chaos had really been quite tame, all things considering.

Though this wasn’t a surprise. After all, Corco knew that something like this was bound to happen after his speech, so the entire city’s forces had been well prepared. Police presence in the streets had been tripled from the usual levels during the festival, and the fire department had also been put on alert.

Only a few cases didn’t fit in with the image of harmless exuberance. The ones that stood out the most were several vicious murders. Although murder was a common occurrence in any city, these ones were special. After all, the death of a lord and a priest was always a horrible event in Medala. Both dying on the same day rarely ever happened, not to mention from a violent death, out in the open street.

“What a fucking mess,” Corco mumbled as he read the details.

Apparently, there had been assassination attempts on several lords, and on several of the priests who had been spreading misinformation in the month leading up to the festival. Even some of the supervisor warriors had been attacked, even though they were just running dogs and didn’t really matter.

While many of these assassinations hadn’t succeeded, at least the two biggest targets had been hit successfully. This attack was surprisingly well-coordinated, which explained its relative success against the trained guards of lords.

In fact, even the failed assassins managed to get away from the warriors. Not one of them had been caught so far. Though it looked like the victims were too busy fleeing his city and didn’t have time to waste on revenge or prisoners, so this clearly wasn’t due to the brilliance of the assassins.

For Corco, the lack of clear suspects was the best message in these reports. At least this way, there was still some wiggle room to navigate these incidents and steer them into a positive direction. To him, the long-term impact of these murders was far more important than bringing the killers to justice.

Although it sounded harsh, he really didn’t feel sorry for the victims. With their overbearing nature, the priests and lords had pressed the people of his city at every step. With how tyrannical they had become towards the end of their ‘reign’ this month, they had really deserved their end.

As far as Corco was concerned, Watayi and Rafun had completely misread the signs, and had thus been overwhelmed by the future. It was as simple as that. The culture of Saniya had been quietly changing for a long time already, though it had happened behind closed doors, where these noble lords would never consider looking.

Unlike them, Corco had spent some of his time inviting the commoners of the city to quiet, private parties, smaller in scale and nature than the noble banquets. He was also being kept informed by the ghosts who were living all throughout Saniya’s society these days. As a result, he had a good idea of what was going on inside the homes of his citizens.

So the ideas that Corco had presented during his speech were nothing new to most people. A lot of them had already heard similar things in private. Though only now, with the official support of both their king and the heavens, did these new ideas break out of the private sphere and into the public.

In the end, it was obvious that the old forces who had restrained the commoners all this time would lose out first. All Rafun and Watayi had to do was listen to their people for once, and maybe they would have seen the danger early. Had they restrained themselves more, they wouldn’t have been targeted like this. In fact, they weren’t the only ones who would suffer, and maybe they were better off dead, so they wouldn’t have to live through the worst of it.

Because in the future, things wouldn’t get better, neither for the high born nor for the high priests. Already, Corco’s new bill of rights had spread throughout his entire city in a single night. Soon, it would spread all across Medala, and even into the Verdant Isles. After all, the priests weren’t the only ones who could play with printing presses.

Over the past month, the presses of Corco’s city had printed out tens of thousands of copies of his bill of rights, which were now being carried all over the kingdom, and even beyond. From the reports, many of his guests had taken the chance to carry a stack of truth home with them. They would become free advertisers for his plans once they reached home.

In fact, Corco had long prepared for this as well. Many of the copies had been specifically printed in the cumbersome font of old Yakua. Although it had been expensive to build presses designed for the complex language, it would guarantee that those Yaku up north or on the Verdant Isles could still read it.

After all, although his bill of rights was meant to apply specifically to his own kingdom, that didn’t keep others from drawing their own conclusions. Within the paper, there were many general terms hidden for those who were willing to misinterpret them.

In several passages, he extended rights to ‘all people’, ‘all races’, ‘all Yaku’, or ‘all people of Medala’. Really, it was just a way to show his attitude that all humans were equal, which just seemed like a logical conclusion to Corco. However, others may consider these hints an invitation, or even a call to action.

While he didn’t expect a piece of paper to spark a revolution by itself, it was never a bad idea to plant the relevant seeds in the north early. Then, once he had proper control of the south, he could use the enthusiasm of the people to ensure a far smoother operation of his future plans up north.

However, for now, their enthusiasm had made his work a lot more difficult. After all, he was still planning to negotiate with the league of lords, even if they were in a war right now. Even after everything they had done, he wasn’t ready to remove the lords just yet. Doing things too absolutely would always leave a mess, and this time was no different.

If all the lords and all of their servants were to be removed, Corco simply wouldn’t have the manpower to completely govern all the different estates. Thus, he still needed their cooperation, at least for several years, as he slowly eroded their power. However, if the lords thought they were being hunted and killed by his people, they would fight for their lives, to the bitter end.

The upcoming war would become a lot harder, and would cost far more lives and far more money than he wanted. Even if he won in the end, the depleted estates of the dead lords would be a mess that would take decades to control and clean up. Not to mention that the indiscriminate murder of lords in his own city would also leave a bad aftertaste for the lords who were still allied with him.

With help from the ‘lightning miracle’, he was planning to weaken his isolation, rather than make it worse. In conclusion, the death of the priest and the lord could never be allowed to fall on the heads of his people, even if it was unfair towards the dead.

After some moments of contemplation, he came to a decision. He had already told so many lies, one more wouldn’t make a difference. Finally, the king looked back up from his desk, and towards Fadelio. As always, his attendant was working near him, always ready to take the king’s orders.

“Send a message to Quato,” Corco said to Fadelio. “Tell him that the police shouldn’t try too hard to come up with suspects for these murders. Last night was chaotic, so it’s hard to find the killers, right?”

“Not a problem,” Fadelio said. However, halfway through his standing animation, he paused again.

“Still, we should give the lords some kind of explanation, right?” the attendant asked. “Just saying that we couldn’t find the killers would be too insincere. It’ll only look like we’re sheltering the killers, and it’ll make us look even more suspicious.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Corco replied. He had already considered this problem, but that’s where the lies came in. “Yesterday, everyone from everywhere was in the city. So long as no suspects are found, almost everyone could be the killer, right. I mean, the lords of the south have plenty of enemies, and so do the priests. The Arcavians are fighting the Pacha priests for control of the northern kingdoms. The northern kingdoms are fighting each other, and then there’s House Ichilia too. Plus, with all the spy incidents in the city over the past few years, everyone knows that all of them love to make trouble in Saniya. With all of that chaos going around, it’ll be easy to find some believable suspects that won’t make us look bad, right?”

“I understand. I’ll do it right away.”

Thus, Fadelio left the king’s study to fulfill his orders. In the matter of last night’s murders, Corco really didn’t need to consider any more details than this. That was the advantage of having capable subordinates. He was sure that Fadelio would entrust the right people to pick the right suspects and ‘find’ the right evidence he could present the other lords with. Now, the murders weren’t his problem any more.

Thus, Corco leaned back in his seat, content with his work. Now that he had dealt with the fallout of last night, the king could use his time to think about his next steps.

Although he had won over the commoners in his city, most of his kingdom was now hostile towards him. As always, the old powers wouldn’t just go away without a fight. At best, he had reversed their positions. Before the festival, Corco had been up against a wall, with his soldiers in poor morale, and his enemies in an aggressive stance. They had used their advantage to demand concessions like the nonsense supervision rules for his manufactories.

Now, after the lightning of last night, morale was no longer a problem for Corco’s soldiers. At the same time, the warriors under the league of lords would falter sooner or later. As the contents of his bill of rights spread among the other southern estates, they would start to realize that they didn’t have to be well-fed slaves to their masters any more.

With their backs against the wall, Corco knew how Mayu and the other lords would react. It was obvious, really. They had failed to beat him through tricks and external pressure, so now their only way out was a direct victory through military conquest. Before they lost the support of their soldiers, the southern lords would launch an attack on Saniya. A war could no longer be avoided.

Uneasy, Corco stood up and went to the large window of his study. From here, he could see Rapra Square down below. Yesterday, it had been the center of his festival. Early this morning, it had been, predictably, a mess. Now however, the entire square was already cleaned up, though it was hard to see below the masses of people. Unlike the rest of Saniya’s streets, which were mostly empty right now, the square had once again been filled with bodies.

Though whereas yesterday, the people in the square had been tens of thousands of commoners, now they were tens of thousands of soldiers. While the lords had turned silly relishing in their own power over the past month, Corco had quietly moved all of his troops back home.

From all over his kingdom and overseas, every last soldier trained over the past five years had come together here, to be deployed for war as quickly as possible. Even many warriors from his allied lords had quietly arrived in Saniya to be integrated into his army.

The chaotic festival had been the perfect cover for thousands of troops to enter the city without anyone’s notice. Now, they were ready to start a war long before Mayu could react.

At most, it would take until tomorrow morning for his army to get combat ready and move out. Then, he would personally take them on a short journey south, where Mayu and his gang were already waiting for him. Although the league of lords was already mobilized, they would lose their initiative before they would even hear news of last night’s events.

Last time, Mayu had managed to prevent Corco from handing Ogulno his just punishment. This time, nothing would stand in the king’s way. As he watched his troops assemble down below, his previous unease disappeared, replaced by a confident calm. Come what may, he was determined to finally take full control of his kingdom.