Chapter 1: The Collapse of a Nation a Year Later and the Miss Nun

Half a year after the conclusion of the Silent Incident, the Roman Empire continued to operate slowly yet effectively under the de-regentization administrative plan imposed by the current ruling class. It was similar to a suicidal patient taking their final, determined steps toward the roof.

The new Roman Empire law dictated that everything once promoted by the former regent had to now be eradicated.

The Red Cross, which was once a free healthcare institution, was replaced by an expensive group of noble doctors. The nobility reclaimed the monopoly they once held, and the residents hadn’t detected a change within the short span of half a year.

The short-sighted folks felt that after the Red Cross, characterized as a blood-sucking and personally useless thieves’ guild, was replaced by the nobility, they were relieved to pay fewer coins in taxes each month. Consequently, they could afford a few more pieces of bread, which they saw as an improvement.

It wasn’t just the Red Cross that faced this fate. Almost everything that the former regent had implemented was ruthlessly erased.

The Holy Court of the Church of Light condemned the scholars whom he had cultivated as heretics. Those scholars who had remained silent for him during the Silent Incident were all arrested in the days that followed. Scholars studying culture, tradition, the origins of theology, and even those involved in promoting education were almost all sentenced to death, except for those involved in military research.

The Church of Light believed that burning at the stake could send the souls of heretics into hell. Thus, scholars who aspired to enlighten the people, enabling them to reject religion, or to put it another way, to uphold their right to refuse religious beliefs, were naturally subjected to the torment of hellfire. They were roasted until they were reduced to nothing more than lifeless demons.

Two months following the incident of the scholar arrests, amid the permeating smell of gunpowder within the diocese and the acrid scent of burning that lingered on the streets for two weeks, the souls of countless scholars were reduced to charcoal and cast into hell under the boisterous praises to the Lord by the oblivious believers. 

A small number, however, managed to escape the confines of the Roman Empire through various connections, ultimately finding refuge in a country on a different continent that was currently in the process of colonizing the New World.

It was not only the religious figures who were persecuting the scholars. The nobles, landowners, military, and even the royal family were exhausting every possible means to obliterate the influence that Yang Hao once had.

The former Regent had promoted free night schools, but these were ordered to close. The nobles assured the public that literacy was not crucial, promising to protect them, deliver justice, and provide fair employment with appropriate salaries.

The commoners were touched and grateful, oblivious to the fact that their lack of numerical understanding was being exploited. They couldn’t comprehend why the purchasing power of their wages was diminishing month by month, even though the amount they received stayed the same.

The innovative steam factories, also an initiative of the former Regent, were systematically dismantled. The royal family justified this action by claiming it was a measure to create more job opportunities for the citizens.

The royal family wasn’t blind to the productivity gains offered by the steam factories. However, in the wake of the Regent’s expulsion, they found themselves incapable of grasping the necessary conditions for the implementation of the policies he left behind.

Unable to carry out these strategies, they reasoned that it was easier to revert to the manageable yet primitive era that everyone was familiar with. 

The young empress watched helplessly as her elders demolished the grand accomplishments into mere rubble, while the court chief judge, now a mere maid, could do nothing but cover her face and sigh.

The work unions across various regions were entirely dissolved. The union leaders relinquished their power, lured by the nobles’ promises of doubled salaries and a five-year tax exemption. With the dissolution of the unions, the workers lost their collective bargaining power. They found themselves succumbing to layers of exploitation, their silence bought with a meager two silver coins during the Silent Incident.

A silver coin could barely feed a family of three for a day in the Roman Empire, an amount even less than the daily earnings of a beggar.

And there was so much more.

Under the influence of landowners, the direction of the royal family, and the execution by the government, the farmers within the Roman Empire lost the safety net provided by agricultural insurance. Spurred on by religious beliefs, they clung to the notion that following the expulsion of the former Regent, the Roman Empire would bask in God’s benevolence, with each year’s harvest outdoing the last.

Farmers no longer harbored concerns over their crops. Consequently, the once heavily invested irrigation system, which depended on steam power for proper functioning and maintenance, fell into disrepair due to prolonged neglect. The money saved was not reinvested in the farmers’ interests, but instead poured into the salons of the nobility, funding an endless supply of cakes and confections.

Upon General Dreycar’s recommendation, the Royal Army, an institution established by the former Regent on behalf of the royal family, was disbanded. The reason was that their allegiance to the former Regent exceeded their loyalty to the royal family, a circumstance that the monarchy could not tolerate.

Of course, this was the publicly declared reason. The actual cause was the large maintenance costs of this army, equipped as they were with state-of-the-art steam firearms. Moreover, there wasn’t a single operational steam factory across the entire Roman Empire to sustain equipment production.

Wouldn’t it be more logical to disband an army they could ill afford, and instead create a traditional army rooted in the use of swords and shields, and supplemented by archers and mages?

The royal family harbored a hopeful mindset, believing they could establish a new military force during their goodwill period with various factions. Indeed, after a half year of unrest, prosperity finally arrived. They now had funds at their disposal.

Almost everything bequeathed by the Regent was wiped clean, and any industrial research and public works requiring large capital investments were explicitly banned. This naturally left a surplus of gold in the national treasury.

The excess gold created an illusion among the Roman Empire’s population that the nation had grown significantly wealthier post-Regent. 

However, for the current rulers of the Roman Empire, while they had grown richer, there were still considerable conflicts in the distribution of wealth.

The Diocese, led by the Archbishop, aspired to accrue more benefits to expand its congregation. But everyone outside the Diocese feared the religion growing too powerful, thereby diminishing their influence. As such, no one agreed to the archbishop’s proposal, even though he had contributed the most during the Qiuet Incident.

The unanimous opposition triggered the wrath of this rotund, oily archbishop, who, in his anger, shattered several tiles in the conference room with his scepter.

The militarist faction led by General Dreycar wanted to use the surplus funds to expand the army. Their goal was to facilitate military campaigns against bordering elven tribes and other foreign nations, thereby executing a crude military expansion. However, an overly dominant military would inevitably lead to the weakening of other factions. Consequently, everyone except General Dreycar expressed their disapproval, leaving the representative chosen by the militarist faction visibly disgruntled.

The nobility wished to claim more land ownership, while the royal family advocated for increased nationalization of land. The two parties were at odds, neither willing to yield, and inevitably, the meeting concluded on a sour note.

The landowners remained silent. Regardless of the faction, it seemed like they were all digging into their flesh. They couldn’t agree to the demands of other factions and lacked the audacity to voice their own requests.

As the heated discussions intensified, the polite salutations of “Your Grace” and “Great General” no longer echoed in the conference room. Instead, the air was filled with shouts of “You fat pig!” and “You bald fool!”, punctuated by the sharp ring of unsheathed weapons.

With everyone exercising their utmost restraint, this meeting–which was to decide the distribution of benefits within the Roman Empire–did not devolve into bloodshed, for everyone recognized their incapability to manage the aftermath of such a disaster.

However, the absence of bloodshed on the surface didn’t mean stability behind the scenes. The day after this distressing meeting concluded, the archbishop declared that the diocese would implement autonomy, while ensuring the integrity of the Roman Empire.

Caught off guard by this announcement, the royal family barely had time to respond before General Dreycar issued a similar statement, declaring his intention for military autonomy under the same premise.

In rapid succession, apart from minor landowners and nobles who couldn’t survive without the support of the royal family, powerful families within the ranks of the nobility and landowners started announcing their independence.

Compounding the situation, due to the earlier disbandment of the royal army by the royal family, they were left powerless and unable to assert their authority. To their dismay, they discovered the recently disbanded royal soldiers had now become private armies for the nobles, the protective forces for the archbishop, or even servants to the landowners.

Having effectively harmed themselves, the Roman royal family could only swallow the bitter pill they had made. Consequently, the Roman Empire found itself in a state of apparent unity but with deep internal fragmentation.

The situation took a dire turn when the Empire encountered a drought in the spring, a year after the end of the Silent Incident, plunging the Roman Empire into a severe internal crisis.

During the drought, every faction of the Roman Empire fended for themselves. Farmers bore the brunt of the losses, pleading for divine intervention, but their prayers fell on deaf ears.

They remembered their insurance, only to realize that they had recently stamped their fingerprints on documents canceling their agricultural insurance.

They thought back to the mechanical devices buried in the ground, designed to spring into action in times of need. However, due to a lack of maintenance over a long period, the essential pipelines had burst and were now unusable. Even the scant few that remained functional were woefully inadequate against the empire-wide drought.

The specter of a visible famine loomed, and off the coast, ships from a distant continent watched this teetering empire with predatory eyes.

In this hour of crisis, the reunited interest groups remembered the man they had expelled, the man who single-handedly unified the fragmented nations into an empire. If he had managed that feat, surely, he could pull the now splintered Roman Empire together once more.

As fervently as they had once wished for the former regent’s death, they now wished for his survival.

However, for that man—the one on whom they now dramatically pinned their hopes of resurrection—none of this mattered.

After a year-long journey on foot, he finally returned to the place where it all began. Filthy, with unkempt hair and beard and lifeless eyes, he stood bewildered in the deserted village.

It seemed that on hearing news of his banishment, every resident of Skool Village had vacated, only to avoid contact with him as if he were a plague.

Whether it was the villagers he once helped or the village chief whose life he had saved and who had vowed to await his return, they had all left.

He stood before a dilapidated wooden house, noticing a sign hanging on it, reading, “For Sale.”

This was not due to the chaos of war, nor a sudden catastrophe, but because he had been exiled. He had no other home to return to but this place.

They simply abandoned it all because of that? They wouldn’t even allow him to live out the rest of his failed life as a simple farmer?

‘What was all my years of dedication for?’ he questioned. 

His lover never defended him, his friends remained silent to this day, and the students he nurtured offered no support during his darkest hour. He had risked life and limb for them, for this country, only to find himself in such a dire situation. 

‘What was the purpose of my relentless efforts? For what, exactly, have I been striving?’

Men don’t often shed tears. It’s only at the deepest depths of despair that they do. 

As he recalled the numerous sacrifices that had led him to his current predicament, he couldn’t help but tear up. Even if he had spent his tears dry during his year-long journey, he could not stop them from tracing the contours of his gaunt cheeks and splashing onto the weed-ridden ground.

Drip. 

The muffled echo of his tears landing on the earth.

Pat. 

The quiet rustle of approaching footsteps.

Yang Hao slowly lifted his head and turned around. There stood a white-haired nun in a white habit, a veil adorning her head, holding a basket in her hands.

Surprise registered on the nun’s face, which soon morphed into a playful smirk after a brief hesitation.

“I was wondering who could be shedding tears and returning with such a gloomy expression. But it’s you, isn’t it? The former regent, Mr. Yang Hao?”

She exaggeratedly crossed her palms over her ample bosom. Her playful comment drew a cold, bitter chuckle from Yang Hao.

“Did you show up just to mock me?”

He recognized this nun. It was Sister Teresa, a vexatious woman who managed to stand out as eccentric even amongst the most unorthodox of religious figures. And surprisingly, it seemed that the nun had a good understanding of his current predicament.

‘Did she come here specifically to mock me in my present state of ruin? Is she here to insult me and then hypocritically say that I wouldn’t have ended up like this had I listened to her and stayed in the village?’ 

As these thoughts crossed Yang Hao’s mind, his fists clenched in anger.

She displayed a familiar playful smirk, then stepped forward. Despite Yang Hao’s subconscious attempts to step back, she reached out and wiped the tears from his face with her sleeve, brushing away the dust.

“It’s indeed funny to see you so wretched, and well, I did enjoy mocking you. However, I, Sister Teresa, can’t help but feel troubled when a homeless puppy is left out alone.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“Yes, you are. A little puppy.”

Sister Teresa lightly touched Yang Hao’s nose with her finger. Then, much to his surprise, she took his hand and began leading him toward the outskirts of the desolate village.

“Where are you taking me?”

Yang Hao tried to pull away, to stand his ground, but he found that his strength was somehow ebbing away with the warmth he felt from her hand.

His nose began to tingle. The dried tears threatened to flow once again. He rushed to ask a question, hoping it would give him time to compose his thoughts.

But instead of answering his question, Sister Teresa looked back at him, puzzled.

“What are you talking about? Do you plan to freeze to death in the village by standing outside like a fool? Are you alright? Just because you can endure the cold doesn’t mean that I, as a delicate nun, can. So, stop standing there, and if there’s anything you need, we can talk about it when we get home.”

‘Home? Do I have a home?’

Yang Hao looked back silently. The once familiar silhouette of the desolate village was receding further into the distance, no longer a place he could call home.