Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived Volume 4 (eBook)

Masekinokatasa (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-6538-4 (ISBN)

Infos

'My victory is preordained!' (Yeah, right! My army's half the size of the enemy's!)
His Majesty Carmine has hardly settled into his new throne when he finds himself under attack by the sons of the corrupt nobles he purged. If he wishes to unite the Empire, he must win this war, no matter the cost. But with an army half the size of his enemy's-and missing most of its commanding officers to boot-his numerical disadvantage seems hopelessly daunting.
It's a good thing all his plans were for the sake of this very moment.
Tactics, schemes, and grand strategy galore await in this battle-map-filled volume 4 of Imperial Reincarnation!

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"e;My victory is preordained!"e; (Yeah, right! My army's half the size of the enemy's!)His Majesty Carmine has hardly settled into his new throne when he finds himself under attack by the sons of the corrupt nobles he purged. If he wishes to unite the Empire, he must win this war, no matter the cost. But with an army half the size of his enemy's-and missing most of its commanding officers to boot-his numerical disadvantage seems hopelessly daunting.It's a good thing all his plans were for the sake of this very moment.Tactics, schemes, and grand strategy galore await in this battle-map-filled volume 4 of Imperial Reincarnation!

Textauszug

A Horseback Retrospective

As the emperor’s host advanced along the highway, bound for the battlefield, the cheers of the people could still be heard far behind it, as if urging the procession on.

The last time I’d heard such cheers, it had been from within the confines of a carriage, and I had only been five years old. The last time I’d left the imperial capital, it had been for a tour of the Empire, and I had been nothing more than a puppet under the heavy guard of the nobility’s soldiers.

Now, at last, I had left the city of my own will, unfettered by the control of another. As the commander in chief of the emperor’s host, no less—though of course, we had an actual military commander with us to do most of the commanding. Still, it was hard not to feel moved.

I realized that I felt calm. The frustration I’d felt at not being able to leave the imperial demesne’s confines—a frustration I had not even noticed until now—was gone. My destination was a battlefield, and I knew that many of my plans would no doubt go awry amid the chaos there. But I would adapt with the current, rather than let it drag me under. Or at least, that was what I told myself.

I’d experienced battle before, but it had been coincidental, an ambush on my traveling column during one of my tours. Departing for the front at the head of an army was an altogether different experience. It had taken all thirteen of my years since being reborn in this world, but finally, here I was.

I suppose thirteen probably sounds quite young to you. Back in Japan, it would’ve put me around the age when I’d first be entering middle school. As for me, though, I’d felt every day of those thirteen years. Because you see, I was what you’d call a transmigrator: someone who’d been reborn with memories of their past life.

＊＊＊

After my life as a citizen of Japan, I had been granted a second spin around the wheel of creation, with the catch that the world I’d been reborn into was very much not Earth. Here, my name was Carmine de la Garde-Bundarte, emperor from birth of the Bundarte Empire, a country situated upon the landmass known as the Eastern Continent.

Emperor from birth. I bet that has an attractive ring to it, huh?

After all, an emperor was absolute, above even a king. An all-powerful monarch, usually of a sprawling empire. And that description would be correct, if we were talking about the dictionary definition. Ideally an emperor possessed complete authority, commanded the total obedience of his lords and retainers, and lived in the lap of luxury, sampling from lavish, opulent feasts on the daily.

I knew there was no shortage of people back on Earth who, if they were to be reborn in another world, had an entire life planned out for themselves. I mean, I had been one of them. For example, they would start out as the child of a wealthy merchant, or perhaps a noble, make a name for themselves via a series of thrilling adventures, work their way up to becoming the king of their own country, then expand their influence until eventually they became an emperor.

Unfortunately, in my case, the position of emperor had come with the qualifier: “from birth.”

In ordinary circumstances, a child would never take the throne, much less a newborn infant. The way it was supposed to go was that he would be raised and educated as the crown prince, inheriting the title of emperor from his predecessor only after becoming an adult.

Why had I been emperor from birth, then, you ask? That would be because my father, the crown prince, and my grandfather, the previous emperor, had already been dead at the time of my birth. More accurately, they had been assassinated. Hence, with no one else around to sit on the throne, the duty had landed in the lap of yours truly.

And to be fair, no one had possessed the gall to tell me what to do. Though of course, since I was a child, they’d ignored my commands too.

If I’d had the desire to order my lords, or indulge in whatever luxury took my fancy, I was sure I would have had no difficulty doing so—with the caveat that, if at any point I had overdone it and the nobility judged me to be more trouble than I was worth, they’d have had me bumped off.

As for lavish, opulent feasts, those had indeed been a part of my daily life. Albeit they’d always been cold to the center when they’d gotten to me, since they’d needed to be tested for poison, which had involved waiting for any possible delayed-effect pathogens to take effect.

What’s that? Alcohol and women? What was a child supposed to do with those?

Anyway, my point was that there was nothing more hollow and dangerous than a throne without power. If your very short list of duties consisted of pleasing the nobility, then you were no different from a court jester. So it went for any born sovereign.

Incidentally, certain historians have claimed that Tokugawa Iemitsu, third shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, had once uttered the words, “I have been a shogun since birth.” In his case, however, his grandfather Ieyasu had still been alive at the time of his delivery, and his father Hidetada had been alive for some years even after Iemitsu had become shogun. Quite honestly, I would’ve swapped places with him any day of the week.

Why were my father and grandfather killed, you ask? I’m afraid I couldn’t say. I did know one thing, though, and that was the identity of those who’d masterminded it: the Chancellor and the Minister of Ceremony, the two most powerful noblemen in the Empire. From the moment I was born, I had been their puppet. Karl de Van-Raul, the Chancellor, had possessed direct control over roughly a third of the Empire and strutted about like he owned the place. Phillip de Garde-Agincarl, the Minister of Ceremony and my other grandfather, had held dominion over a vast stretch of land of his own and acted with arrogant impunity.

The political conflict between these two powerful noblemen had been fierce, and my continued survival had been a product of their compromise. I had been allowed to live because, as an ignorant infant, I could serve as a convenient puppet that they could discard at their leisure.

Thus, in order to survive, I had acted the part of a malleable fool. Year after year, I had done everything in my power to prevent them from noticing that I possessed memories of a past life, all the while gathering allies in secret.

During that time, the Empire continued to decline. With a child at the top and the individuals who held true power more concerned with the interests of their own holdings, it was inevitable.

But then, unable to bear the situation any longer, Duke Warren raised an army, its stated cause to rescue the emperor from his manipulators. Shaken by the sudden rebellion, the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony had ceased their long-standing argument over who would get to crown me and came to a compromise. The coronation would take place, and they would crown me together.

Incidentally, this argument of theirs had existed in the first place because the individual who crowned me needed to be my legal guardian. In other words, they would be the true ruler of the Empire in all but name.

However, the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony had let their guards down. As they advanced toward me, crown in their hands, they could not have imagined that the puppet before their eyes had been waiting years for this exact moment. I had drawn my blade, beheaded them both with my own hands, and crowned myself. Then I had declared the commencement of my reign, making it clear that it would be mine, and no one else’s. At last, I had been freed from my strings.

But that did not mean I’d gotten my happily ever after. Far from it. The nature of my elimination of the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony—instantaneous and in one fell swoop—had been necessitated by my circumstances. Since I’d been under constant surveillance, I’d needed to make a single, pivotal move that would upturn the board state they’d created.

Actions, however, had consequences. The suddenness of the upheaval had meant that the only territory I’d truly been able to seize control over had been the imperial capital and a scant few cities in the local region. Meanwhile, the sons of the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony had revolted, declaring their independence from the Empire. Honestly, that had only been fair enough. I couldn’t have expected them to obey me after I’d killed their fathers.

As for the other nobility, there had been no way they were going to fall in line so easily. How could they bend the knee to a thirteen-year-old child who had—for all they knew—been a puppet his entire life? I might not have been pleased with how few allied themselves with me, but I had not been surprised.

Some of the nobility had allied themselves with the Chancellor and Minister of Ceremony’s sons, while others had adopted a wait-and-see policy out of self-preservation. Only a scant few had rejoined the imperial fold, and that did not necessarily mean I could trust them. That was particularly true in the case of the lesser nobility who governed the cities around the imperial capital, since they’d previously been in the patronage of the Chancellor or Minister of Ceremony. It was perfectly possible that they were only obeying me because, distance-wise, it was the safe choice, and they would betray me the moment my authority weakened.

In addition to all that, I still faced the task...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.12.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived
• Illustrationen: Kaito Shibano
• Übersetzer: Jason Li
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: Drama • hard mode • Isekai • Magic • male protagonist • Politics • royalty
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-6538-1 / 1718365381
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-6538-4 / 9781718365384