Henry Richard von Hecker never remained inactive.

  “N-no, it cannot be! Who are you? Who are you to do this to me—?!”

  “Silence.”

  With a final slash of his rapier, the second Grand Regent fell in front of him.

  The entire estate of Count Reitz von Veringen was now on fire. Masked members of the Imperial Army, all of them under the Young Lotharingia society, wiped out the regent’s security force.

  Earlier, Henry had to fight against three powerful knights of House Veringen, all of them battlemages with eight to ten magic circles. They could have defeated Henry and his troops easily.

  Yet all of them became nothing but bloodstains on his sword, the same with their fat master.

  His cold grey eyes glowed slightly as he cleaned his bloodied blade.

  Henry had no choice.

  While the Crown Princess ran around the country improving her reputation, it was becoming impossible for a popular revolution to occur. Word of her acts of kindness, alongside the popularity of the saintess, had been spreading.

  And so, Henry made a bold, new strategy.

  If her plan was to ignore the regency council by taking care of the people, then Henry would swoop in and take care of the regency council himself. They’ve already made so many enemies due to their inept rule, that many nobles were secretly disgruntled by their presence.

  Last week, Marquise Severin von Huser, the eldest man of the regency council, also died of a ‘hunting accident’, and so far, it had been met with celebrations instead of condemnation.

  Henry expected the same with this one, as he and his men left the estate.

  By the next three days, after chaos and a flurry of conflicting information flooded the Empire’s newspapers, the remnants of the regency council once again issued, in panic, a set of new security orders to tackle ‘anti-noble banditry’.

  The Royal Guard, focused on supporting the Crown Princess in revitalizing the west, barely had any ability to act in the east, therefore, it was the Imperial Army’s, specifically, the 4th Group Army that would enforce these new rules.

  “Those fools!” the general of the 4th Group Army downed an entire glass of beer in front of Henry. “Do they really think their out-of-touch orders mean anything anymore? The region around Ostend is under my jurisdiction!”

  “Well, they don’t know that,” Henry grinned, predatory.

  “That propaganda campaign of yours is also working well,” the old general chided. “The general soldiery are now slowly being turned against the Regency Council. It’s only a matter of time and—”

  “Slow down, general, and drink your beer.”

  Henry glanced around their secret hideout, where the most high-ranking officials of the Most Honorable Sons of Lotharingia gathered.

  The fiasco in Perlenstadt had been a great boon to Henry.

  While dissatisfaction was great in the Defense Forces, it was now also growing in the Imperial Army. Their humiliation and the abandonment they received during the Battle of Perlsenstadt created cliques of officers in the Imperial Army that despised the current leadership.

  By offering them the potential of greater power, Henry managed to bring in a lot more officers from the Imperial Army to his side, aided by the fact that he, during the battle, entered the city to aid the Defense Forces while commanding Imperial Army soldiers.

  That little act was seen as valiant by the soldiers of the Empire, something which helped bring back some of the lost prestige and dignity of the Imperial Army. Of course, Henry knew that these soldiers had little reason to covet prestige or dignity.

  They ran away from the battle all by themselves.

  But that was minute details. Henry instead exploited it. “No, it isn’t your fault that your prestige is in tatters,” he would say. “No, it’s the Regency Council’s fault,” he would continue.

  And they were easily swayed.

  “Slow down, why not keep up the tempo?” the general asked, a bit annoyed. “We already killed two of them. We only have two left to go. Then we can finish everything. The unrest in the east and west won’t be eternal, after all, with the Crown Princess running around—”

  “And that’s exactly why we cannot be too hasty,” Henry said. “The entire point of our attacks is to place the Regency Council on edge, and force them to issue measures that will sully their name further.”

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  Curfews. Bans on public assembly. Crackdowns on popular publications. The list went on. In their fear and panic, the Regency Council was now a government that appeared like a cornered coward to everyone in the Empire.

  Right as Henry wanted it.

  “But, they still serve a purpose,” Henry said. “It depends on how the Crown Princess and her circle react. After all, you do understand that the enemy of your enemy can be your friend, even if temporarily, no?”

  The general of the 4th Group Army narrowed his eyes, before grinning.

  “You’re quite the clever one, aren’t you?”

  “No need for those praises.”

  “For a man who never loses to foes stronger than him, it is quite obvious that your brain is your greatest asset! I believe the Empire will soon be in good hands!”

  And with that, the officer in front of Henry lost himself in his stupor, drinking till he blacked out.

  Imperial Army soldiers.

  Henry internally scoffed even as he smiled.

  Nothing but corrupt second-rate fodder.

  +++

  “Hah…now, all I need is to talk to the Regency Council and the Defense Forces.”

  Alexa lay her back comfortably on the soft seat of her carriage, as they drove in a leisurely pace back to the Monile Palace. She’d completed her first crisis quest, the [SCHENGEN REFUGEE CRISIS], thus avoiding a -10 opinion penalty for commoners, but she gained +5 opinion instead.

  In addition to that, her extra actions while doing that netted her +4 opinion from commoners as well, so now, she had -31/100 (+25) opinion for the commoner strata, or, to put it simply, they disliked her by negative six points in practice.

  Not great, not terrible, but at least she was making herself look so much better now.

  She even began work on the [EXPAND THE IMPERIAL FOOD SUPPLY] quest, as she began hiring thousands of contract farmers to the west while acquiring unused potential farmland to cultivate.

  All of it took so much of her energy, that now that more than a month had passed, she also wanted to pass out.

  “You’ve been truly diligent since that battle, Lady Alexa,” Adele elegantly said on the side as she calmly sat.

  “Am I?” Alexa asked. “I’m not really sure though. I still need to talk to the Defense Ministry and the Regency Council, and settle their dispute.”

  “Right…the herbs.”

  “Mhm.”

  Alexa looked back at that problem. Redhill Moss, Dragonblue Thyme, and Akome Leaves, all necessary ingredients for the elixir that she needed to advance herself, weren't available, because the Defense Ministry was keeping them from her.

  The current crisis, or, dispute between the sitting government of her country and the Defense Forces was both a boon and a headache. Now that she had built up her credibility greatly, she could approach both and present herself as a neutral mediator.

  Alexa wanted two things. Get her herbs by giving reasonable concessions to the Defense Forces, and on the other hand, return the Schengen Region to the civilian government, as it wouldn’t stand to let a military authority forever keep a region now far away from war.

  Still…it probably won’t be easy.

  +++

  “W-what?”

  Alexa’s eyes darted left and right as she read the updated contents of the Iron Saintess novel in her bedroom. She…again, died.

  Not because she was crowned, but because another Regent decided that she was unfit for the throne, declaring a republic instead.

  Of course, why would the regency council do that? Even if they were power-hungry men, they still believed in the pretense of having her as their good little doll. They were still royalists.

  It was simple. The old regency council was replaced, and the one who took their place—was none other than Henry, sponsored by the Imperial Army itself.

  “It doesn’t make sense!” She flipped through the pages, reading how a ‘coup d’etat’ was organized by members of the 4th Group Army, an Imperial Army unit tasked with guarding the eastern half of the Empire.

  Then, out of nowhere, with the support of the leaders of the Imperial Army, they nominated one man to ‘temporarily lead’ the Empire until Alexa was eighteen, and it was Henry Richard von Hecker.

  That man…

  He tested and used Alexa and Phoebe again and again, goading them ‘to prove themselves’ if they were worthy of being the saintess, or in Alexa’s case, of being the Empress. But even when they did their best and their popularity grew…

  Eventually, Henry began sabotaging them, until the people turned their eyes back to him, the Regent. Proclaiming himself as the only one able to restore Lotharingia to its greatness by stomping out ‘corrupt shadowy elites’, ‘restoring law and order’, and everything else, he decreed the monarchy dead.

  Then he proclaimed a Free Republic, with him at the top.

  Alexa and Phoebe died brutally later, during an ‘anti-corruption’ campaign.

  Alexa closed the novel, her face red.

  “How dare he?” She’d been ignoring him all this time, thinking that he was just some weirdo who got lucky, but now. “He already killed two regents, and now, he’s eyeing the last of them.”

  If he defeated the sitting Regency Council, it would be over, because Alexa was still not of age to rule. Someone else had to rule in her place, and she couldn’t choose that. She didn’t choose the current regents either, they were chosen by the nobility.

  In this case, with a rogue Imperial Army, they were the ones who would be choosing who the next regent would be should the current one die out.

  I need to deal with this.

  With her fist curled, Alexa vowed to summon Wilhelm and Alfred tomorrow, both to prepare for the mediation between the Defense Ministry and the Imperial Government—and to deal with whatever secret faction Henry was creating in the shadows.