Arknights: Prime Minister of Kjerag — Chapter 70

Chapter 70: This Land at the End of 1093

Ernst stared at the letter in his hands, the elegant handwriting belonging to Vina seeming entirely at odds with the sheer absurdity of its contents.

‘Is she telling the truth? Could she actually be some sort of political prodigy?’

Was Wei Yenwu truly that easy to negotiate with? Even though Ernst hadn’t personally witnessed the complex political plots surrounding Lungmen, he knew enough to be deeply skeptical. How could the supreme leader of a Nomadic City—a man with direct ties to the Yan Emperor himself—be so easily swayed? In any normal game, a man like Wei Yenwu wasn’t just an NPC you could talk down; if he wasn’t an ally, he was a formidable boss with a massive health bar.

Or did Vina possess some latent Originium Arts capable of manipulating minds? Was that how she had so effortlessly brought the old dragon to the table?

Ernst simply couldn’t buy the explanation she had penned. Vina claimed that she had absorbed a wealth of knowledge during her time in Kjerag, and the moment she applied those lessons in the field, they yielded immediate, spectacular results.

‘Are you kidding me?’Ernst thought, his brow twitching.’I couldn’t even pull off a stunt like that myself, and you’re claiming you learned it from watching me?’

“The student surpassing the master doesn’t usually happen with this kind of flawless victory,” he muttered aloud.

“Oh, it seems Miss Vina still has quite a few secrets hidden beneath that royal exterior,” Ho’olheyak murmured. She was leaning comfortably against the side of Ernst’s head, having just finished reading the letter over his shoulder. The corners of her lips curled upward, revealing a deeply meaningful, almost predatory smile. “However, it appears she is going to complete her assigned task exceptionally well. That is a good thing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is,” Ernst agreed, nodding slowly. “I just hope she doesn’t forget the promises she made.”

“Speaking of which, Kjerag has been eerily quiet as of late,” Ho’olheyak remarked. Her gaze drifted toward the frost-rimmed window. Outside, thick white snow blanketed the landscape, and a small group of Kjerag children were enthusiastically hurling snowballs at one another in the drifts.

“Eerie? This kind of peaceful life is just the baseline normal for Kjerag,” Ernst replied, his tone relaxing. “Not every place on this land operates like Columbia, where the entire societal landscape can flip on its head in three days.”

“Perhaps,” she mused. “But the changes Kjerag has undergone in these recent decades already eclipse the stagnation of the past few millennia.”

It was a monumental shift. A great change unseen in a century—no, a great change unseen in a millennium.

Although the actual geographic and political scope of this transformation was far smaller than the rest of Terra might imagine, for the isolated snowy nation of Kjerag, it was an unmatched, golden opportunity.

Ernst looked out the window at the heavy, swirling flakes—likely the final great snowfall of the year 1093. He reached up and accepted the steaming teacup Ho’olheyak offered him. Without a word, he tacitly allowed her to drape her large, plush tail across his lap, using it as a thick, heated blanket against the winter chill. He took a slow sip of the rich tea, letting the warmth spread through his chest. In that quiet comfort, he silently prayed in accordance with the old Kjerag traditions.

‘May everything proceed smoothly in the coming year.’

But Terra was vast, and many things had already been set into motion in 1093.

In the war-torn lands of Kazdel, Theresis, the undisputed general of the Sarkaz, had officially declared an end to the brutal civil war. He had consolidated the fractured, remaining forces of his younger sister, Theresa, and nominally unified the disparate Sarkaz tribes under his absolute authority as the Chairman of the Military Commission and the Regent of Kazdel.

Yet, this unification was little more than a fragile veneer. In reality, the remnants of Babel had already fled the Kazdel region, reorganizing themselves into the pharmaceutical conglomerate known as Rhodes Island., the Banshee Royal Court and a stubborn minority of Sarkaz mercenaries who remained fiercely loyal to Theresa’s memory had yet to bow to Theresis’s rule.

More pressingly, the voices of seething anger and violent radicalism within Kazdel did not simply evaporate with the war’s end. Instead, deprived of a clear enemy to slaughter, the Sarkaz began to turn their bloodied leads toward one another.

Theresis was acutely aware of this looming disaster.

He had deliberately awakened this rabid beast of war, relying on its unmatched ferocity to forge the current iteration of Kazdel and shatter his sister’s naive, beautiful dream. But now, the beast was thrashing against its chains, running wild, threatening to become entirely uncontrollable.

He had to redirect its ravenous hunger before it completely broke free and tore the Sarkaz people apart from the inside. He needed to harness that destructive momentum to achieve their ultimate goals.

“The deep-seated differences and blood feuds between the Sarkaz tribes are nearly impossible to reconcile,” Theresis noted coldly during a private reflection. “The mercenaries, whose very souls have been shaped and calloused by endless war, find it impossible to lay down their arms and return to a mundane civilian life. Kazdel, a nation almost entirely reduced to ash and rubble by our civil war, simply cannot support such a massive standing army, nor can it contain a populace whose radical, violent emotions have already been pushed to the boiling point.”

If he did nothing, the end of the civil war would not be the end of their struggles. It wouldn’t even be the beginning of the end; it would merely be the bloody end of the beginning.

Kazdel was not Victoria. Even when faced with intense internal political strife, Victoria could easily distract its populace by publicly expelling a couple of Ursus “spy” diplomats. Kazdel possessed no such diplomatic luxuries. Kazdel held only knives and swords, and therefore, it could only use knives and swords to bleed out the toxic emotions that had accumulated over millennia of suffering.

“We must establish a new enemy. And then, we will let the Sarkaz tear it to pieces. This is the only path for the Sarkaz to truly forge a nation, to truly unite!”

Theresis delivered this secret, chilling mandate in the shadowed halls of the Military Commission, speaking only after the various members of the Royal Court had been dismissed from the official session.

The very next day, operating under the convenient guise of independent “Sarkaz mercenaries,” Theresis initiated covert contact with Victorian factions. His objective was singular and ruthless: to alleviate the rampant separatism among the Sarkaz tribes, forge a unified national identity, awaken their dormant pride, and violently “reclaim the living space that rightfully belongs to the Sarkaz.”

His choice to target Victoria was no mere coincidence.

Because by 1093, the grand empire of Victoria was rotting from the inside out.

The systemic persecution of the Tara region had not ceased after the Aslan King was marched to the gallows. On the contrary, the Victorian nobles eagerly demonstrated the empire’s deep moral bankruptcy through their own concrete actions. In the past, the Aslan royal family had employed a delicate balance of conscription and appeasement in Tara, aiming to slowly erode the living soil that supported the Draco royal lineage.

The current ruling nobles, however, possessed neither the patience nor the subtlety for such methods.

As far as the local tyrants were concerned, both the Draco and the Aslan rulers were dead, leaving them in absolute control of Victoria. Adhering to the cruel principle of wringing every drop of value from a tool until it shattered, they drove the living standards of the Taran people down to a miserable abyss—a state scarcely better than the heavily oppressed Infected.

Coexisting with this escalating exploitation, brutal oppression, and systematic cultural genocide of the lower classes was the treacherous maneuvering of the Victorian upper echelon. Led by the cunning Duke Caster, a coalition of nobles actively plotted to suppress the unmatched military prestige that Duke Wellington had amassed following the War of the Four Nations.

The execution of Duke Caster’s political strangulation had seemingly banished Duke Wellington—the Grand Duke famously feared as the “imperial death knell”—from Terra’s political stage for decades.

But anyone with half a mind for strategy knew the truth. Would a Grand Duke who had personally crushed the Emperor of Gaul truly accept defeat so meekly?

“We all clearly know and accurately recognize this obvious fact.”

“Everything Victoria has done to Tara is an absolute atrocity. And this atrocity did not begin with the ascension of a certain King of Victoria, nor will it end with the death of a certain King of Victoria. It is an unconditional, systemic campaign of discrimination and violence, etched deeply into the very bones and blood of Victoria as a nation, and into every individual who proudly claims to be a citizen of this empire.”

“If anyone dares to question this, I can provide a river of blood as evidence.”

Scanning the solemn faces seated around the heavy oak conference table, the Draco stood tall. Purple flames flickered and burned at her edges, casting long, dancing shadows across the room as her soaring, imperious voice recounted the endless list of sins.

“They refuse to approve laws that would grant Tara basic survival, or they shelve these laws indefinitely, ensuring they never take effect. They summon our legislative bodies to places that are unusual, uncomfortable, and deliberately distant from our archives, with the sole, malicious purpose of fatiguing us into compliance.”

“They have repeatedly dissolved our legitimate assemblies. They have incited civil unrest among our people, threatened our families, and forced our greatest heroes to grovel in the mud before them, merely to maintain their suffocating, totalitarian grip.”

“In every stage of this relentless oppression, we Taran people have petitioned for redress in the most humble, peaceful terms. Yet, our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. When the character of a nation is defined by every act that marks a tyrant, and when it inflicts tortures upon its own compatriots without moral guilt or legal trial, that government is entirely unfit to rule the Taran people.”

“I have not failed to notice the Victorian brothers and sisters who stand among us today. I have often reminded them that when their government inflicts atrocities upon Tara, they cannot turn a blind eye simply because the blade has not yet swung their way. That blade is destined to fall on them in the future.”

“I have appealed to their innate sense of justice. I have asked them, for the sake of the thousands of years that Tara has shared borders and blood with Victoria, to reject this endless plunder. But they have turned a deaf ear to justice. They have turned a deaf ear to kinship.”

“Therefore, I am left with no other choice. We will sever these rotting ties. We will treat them as we would any stranger—enemies in war, friends in peace!”

The proud Draco looked down at the utterly silent conference table. The grand hall of Wellington’s ducal residence had never been as quiet as it was in this moment, but the heavy stillness was merely the suffocating pressure before the storm.

“Dublinn will persist in its actions. We will prove to all our Taran compatriots that we are not like the Victorian deceivers, who use empty words to demand sacrifices for a hollow ideal. We will always place ourselves on the bleeding front lines of chaos and glory, to defend Tara’s inherent right to exist!”

“I declare this in the name of my bloodline. I am the Draco King, the King of the Taran people—Eblana!”

Her declaration rang out, vibrating against the stone walls.

The hall remained quiet for a breathless second. The hardened military officers, men fiercely loyal to Duke Wellington, sat with their muscles tensed, their eyes fixed on the old but indomitable figure standing silently behind Eblana.

The old man, whose chest was so heavy with military medals that they covered half his torso, slowly opened his weathered eyes. He had made his choice.

He raised his hand.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

The slow, deliberate applause erupted from his hands—applause that represented the absolute will of Duke Wellington. In an instant, the dam broke, and the entire conference room was engulfed in a deafening sea of applause.

While a sudden, violent crack appeared on the left side of the Victorian empire’s fragile goblet, another fracture was forming on the right, deep within the Duchy of Windermere.

Anfilia Windermere was standing in the grand foyer of her estate, bidding farewell to her husband.

“When you arrive in Londinium, do remember to seek out Duke Caster and ‘say hello’ for me,” she murmured. Her lips were curved into a stunning, elegant smile, but the chilling, murderous intent lacing her silky tone was impossible to miss.

Kent nodded smoothly, adjusting his coat. “Don’t worry, my dear. I will.”

The fact that Duke Caster had recently dispatched assassins to eliminate him was not a matter suitable for public debate at a parliamentary meeting, but it was a blood debt that absolutely had to be settled in the shadows.

Not to mention, that withered old woman had somehow found the sheer audacity to send Anfilia an “elegantly worded” letter in return, mocking their survival.

Fine. If she wants to spar, then we’ll spar, Kent thought grimly. I don’t even need Anfilia to dirty her hands; I can beat that old hag to her knees myself.

Pushing the dark thoughts aside, Kent paused, his expression softening as he looked at his wife. He changed the subject, a hopeful glint in his eye. “This is my first time officially representing Duke Windermere on a state visit. Is that truly all you have to say to me before I leave?”

Anfilia Windermere, the terrifying iron-fisted ruler whose very name made her subordinates tremble, suddenly averted her gaze. A faint, rosy flush crept up her neck, revealing the rare, tender shyness of a loving wife.

“When you return,” she whispered softly, “I will travel with you to Kjerag so we can pick up Delphine. Then, the three of us can rest in the snow for a while. Just us. How does that sound?”

“It sounds like paradise, my Duke,” Kent replied, stepping closer with his usual, unabashed directness. “But isn’t there a more immediate form of encouragement you could offer? For example… a kiss?”

Anfilia’s face flushed a deeper shade of red. Perhaps because such an open display of affection was in such stark contrast to her usual, commanding demeanor, she hesitated for a long moment. Ultimately, she shook her head, though her eyes were warm.

“We will discuss that when you get back. Such things should be earned as a reward.”

“Then I will be full of anticipation, Anfilia,” Kent smiled, his voice dropping to a low, affectionate murmur.

“Lord Kent, the car is ready,” the driver called out respectfully from the manor’s grand entrance, breaking the intimate spell.

Kent gave Anfilia one last, lingering nod. He turned, casting a final glance over the sprawling, carefully manicured plants and ancient trees of the Lienkarden estate, before stepping out into the cold. He boarded the black luxury car waiting at the gates—a vehicle poised to drive him straight into the heart of Victoria’s dark destiny.

[Rhodes’s Note: Eblana’s speech in this chapter heavily mirrors the structure and phrasing of the real-world United States Declaration of Independence, adapted by the author to fit the Taran rebellion against the Victorian Empire.]