Enlil Province, the provincial capital of Larak.
Beneath a cloudless, brilliant blue sky, a scene of breakneck reconstruction unfolded.
Larak had taken the brunt of the earthquake's destruction. Immediately following the disaster, rubble from collapsed homes and fire-gutted buildings had choked every street.
It was not merely the hand of nature, either. Looters and opportunists had ransacked the ruins, compounding the natural catastrophe with human malice until the devastation reached its peak.
Now, that debris had all been cleared away, leaving a cityscape divided roughly equally between buildings that had survived intact and those in the middle of being rebuilt.
Naturally, there was the lively bustle of reconstruction, but another, far more bizarre fervor had taken hold as well.
In Larak's central square, roughly ten criminals were forced to their knees.
All were men, their hands bound behind their backs, both knees pressed firmly into the dirt.
Dressed in ragged prison garb, their hair and beards had grown wild and untamed, encrusted with layers of grime, dried spittle, and scraps of food.
Nearly every one of them hung his head. Though none were gagged, not a single man spoke or made a sound.
To any onlooker, they appeared thoroughly resigned to their fate.
A vast crowd of townsfolk surrounded the square where the condemned knelt.
Soldiers formed a perimeter to keep the people from drawing near, yet even at a distance, an eerie heat rose from the crowd, choking the entire plaza.
Almost every face in the surrounding mob was etched with fury or bitter resentment.
Before long, an official within the cordon looked up at the sky, confirmed the time, and cried out in a ringing voice, "The hour has arrived!"
That single phrase was the spark that ignited a deep reservoir of pent-up rage.
The square erupted into an explosive barrage of roars and deafening cheers.
☆
The provincial capital of Larak, the office within the governor-general's official residence.
I, Noah Ararat, sat behind my desk.
A man stood across from me.
In his mid-thirties, he wore the robes of a high-ranking civil official quite naturally. Yet despite the administrative garb, his complexion was dark, making it far easier to imagine him running about under the open sky than sitting through desk work.
His name was Wards Gwards, one of the men I had recruited into my service after arriving in Enlil Province.
Holding a set of documents, the man delivered his report.
I listened from my chair.
"I have a report to deliver. At noon today, decapitation was carried out upon those whose bribes totaled between thirty thousand and fifty thousand Rien."
"Mm. How did the populace react?"
"The atmosphere on-site was tense with bloodlust, but it was directed entirely at the corrupt officials. Once the heads began to fall, it turned into jubilant cheering. As a result, no unrest or rioting broke out. However..."
"Hm?"
"Well, er..."
Wards hesitated, clearly struggling over what to say.
Veterans of my service like Don or Evelyn knew my temperament well and would have reported without reservation, but Wards, having only served under me directly for a short time, couldn't manage that just yet.
"Just spit it out."
I gave him a gentle nudge.
Perhaps the casual prompt helped, as Wards tentatively spoke up.
"Yes... Well, it seems a great number of food stalls and vendors set up shop nearby, and, er—"
"Is that what had you tongue-tied?"
The corners of my mouth curled into a wry smile.
Since I hadn't explicitly forbidden it beforehand, vendors had gathered in droves, anticipating the crowds.
This was something difficult to comprehend for those unaccustomed to it—especially people from rural farming villages where executions were rare—but the public longed to witness the deaths of corrupt officials. It had effectively become a spectacle—entertainment, even.
Those who were used to it would casually munch on meat skewers while watching heads roll. People seeing it for the first time were often left staring with their mouths agape.
A few eccentric connoisseurs even went so far as to critique the executioner's technique.
Technically, it fell under the umbrella of a "moral nuisance," so I could understand why Wards had hesitated.
However...
"Leave them be. It's a trivial matter."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
"If that's the state of things, proceed as planned. In three days, execute those with amounts between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand."
"As you command... Er..."
Though Wards nodded, his expression betrayed lingering doubt.
He studied my face, clearly agonizing over whether he should voice his thoughts.
"Is there something on your mind?"
"No, well, it isn't so much an issue, but... I was wondering why the executions aren't being carried out all at once. Your Majesty is—"
"I'm currently demoted. I'm not the Emperor, but the governor-general here. Drop the formal 'As you command' while you're at it."
I cut him off.
I had made that clear when we first met, yet he was still using titles and imperial court etiquette with me.
When I pointed this out, Wards hurriedly bowed his head.
"M-My deepest apologies."
"It's fine. To put it bluntly, this demotion is a kind of performance. That's precisely why keeping up appearances matters. If people think, 'At the end of the day, he's still acting like the Emperor,' then everything I'm doing loses its meaning."
"To think that far ahead... Truly remarkable."
"If you understand, then act accordingly from now on. I am the governor-general; adjust your conduct to match. If it puts you in the right frame of mind, you can even curse me to my face depending on the situation."
"Underst—Heaven forbid!!"
He began to bow, then frantically shot upright and waved his hands in denial.
Cursing a governor-general to his face certainly required a fair amount of guts, but in this world, some officials made remonstrating their entire creed, so it wasn't completely out of the question.
I had meant it as a light joke, but Wards seemed to be the type who couldn't take such humor in stride.
Oh well, I thought, letting the matter drop.
"So, what was your question?"
I steered the conversation back on track.
Startled, Wards bowed once before continuing.
"Right—Your Excellency the Governor-General has already sentenced everyone who took ten thousand Rien or more to death, so I was wondering why you aren't carrying them all out at once."
He fumbled slightly over how to address me, but the rest flowed out smoothly.
"Mm. Amounts between ten thousand and thirty thousand receive the death penalty with a stay of execution; thirty thousand to fifty thousand receive decapitation; fifty thousand to one hundred thousand receive decapitation followed by the public display of their heads; and one hundred thousand or more receive execution by hanging, the heaviest sentence aside from treason—was that it?"
"Yes."
"There are two reasons. We graded the severity of the death penalty according to the amount of the bribes; executing them all together would blur the distinction we went to the trouble of making. If the message is just 'bribery means death,' the deterrent effect on future offenders is cut in half."
"Cut in half, you say?"
Wards echoed the words in a murmur, looking as though he couldn't quite wrap his head around the concept.
"Have you ever seen the corpse of a hanged man? Even someone who hanged himself will do."
"N-No, sir."
"On the day before an execution by hanging, they are given a final meal where they can eat whatever they want, to their heart's content. That is the custom. And when a person is hanged, their muscles relax upon death, causing waste to pour freely from their lower body."
"Waste..."
"Funnily enough, even scum like that care about what happens to their bodies after they die. A decapitated corpse looks relatively clean, but a hanged corpse has its lower half coated in filth. We leave them hanging for a while under some pretext, which makes for quite the spectacle."
"So they find that shameful, you mean?"
"Yeah. Apparently, they'd rather die any other way than suffer such a humiliating end."
"..."
Wards's expression turned complicated.
He looked utterly baffled.
To him, once you were dead, that was the end; worrying about how you looked afterward was entirely senseless.
People like that existed. I felt a mild curiosity about which side actually made up the majority.
"You don't need to sympathize. It's enough to understand it as a matter of practical knowledge."
"Y-Yes, sir!"
Wards answered hastily, flustered that I had seen straight through his confusion.
Leaving that aside, I pressed onward.
"Incidentally, with execution by waist chop, the most severe punishment, it takes dozens of minutes to die, and the upper body remains fairly mobile. Watching someone writhe in a pool of their own blood is far more gruesome and agonizing, which is why the Empire treats execution by waist chop as the harshest death penalty."
"So... it's a message to future offenders to 'keep it within reason'?"
"..."
My expression leveled out into stone, and I turned my eyes toward the window in silence.
Because I had abruptly fallen quiet and looked away, panic flashed across Wards's face, wondering if he had said something terribly wrong.
I lowered my voice just a fraction.
"I don't believe bribery can ever be entirely wiped out. I will aim for it, but I don't believe it's actually achievable. That's why I want to shrink its scale as much as possible, thereby minimizing the harm done to the common folk."
"Y-Your—If it's the Governor-General, I'm certain even that—"
"Confusing ideals with reality is the first step toward ruin."
I cut Wards off.
His eyes went wide, and he swallowed hard, choking back the rest of his sentence.
"Down the line, they will inevitably try to cover their tracks. Someone who took over one hundred thousand will cook up excuses to claim they only accepted ten thousand, for instance. Or others will seize the chance during reconstruction, assuming we're too busy to notice. When that happens, punishing them severely will bring things back under control for the time being. Let's see... If we play our cards right, the deterrent should last as long as I live."
"To think that far ahead... Incredible!"
Wards's eyes widened further, his face a mixture of awe and admiration.
I let out a faint chuckle and decided to change the subject.
"We've strayed wildly off-topic. More importantly, have you found candidates to replace those officials?"
"Ah, yes!"
Snapping back to reality, Wards hurried over to the document cabinet in the corner of the room, retrieved a thick sheaf of papers, and presented it to me.
I took the stack and looked down at the first page.
It was a document containing a detailed dossier on a potential civil official.
Naturally, it listed the person's age, physical traits, education, and career history. It went even further, detailing their family structure, lineage, and primary circle of acquaintances.
It was so thoroughly investigated that I couldn't help but be impressed.
Could it be that only the first profile is this thorough? Curious, I flipped through the pages, but every single candidate was cataloged with the same meticulous detail.
"Hm, very clean and easy to follow. Who compiled this?"
"Sir! S-Since it was an order directly from Your Excellency the Governor-General, I felt I could not leave it to my subordinates, so I handled it personally."
"Must have been rough, digging this deep."
"Not at all. It was an order, so it was only natural."
"I see. What is your current stipend?"
"Pardon? Per month... it's forty Rien, but..."
Why bring this up out of nowhere? Bewildered by the sudden, unrelated turn in conversation, Wards blinked in confusion.
"Forty Rien, hm? About double the civilian average."
"Yes."
"Starting this month, I'm raising it to eighty—no, make it one hundred."
"Wh-What?!"
"I reward good work properly. Take it."
"Th-Thank you very much!"
"The same goes for these candidates. As a baseline... we'll set their starting stipends at 1.5 times what their predecessors made."
"1.5 times, sir...?"
"If they do their jobs well and produce results, I'll raise it even further. In exchange—"
"—Ah! If they still turn to fraud and corruption despite that, they will face the absolute harshest punishment, correct?"
"You're catching on."
I smiled faintly.
In short, it came down to the carrot and the stick.
Not every single person is born to be a paragon of virtue.
Nor can you blame capable people for wanting fair compensation for their labor.
That was why I increased their base pay first. And if they chose to dirty their hands with bribery and corruption despite receiving a handsome salary, they would be punished without mercy.
That was my fundamental policy.
It was a baseline approach that hadn't changed much since my days as an imperial prince—and yet...
"Incredible..."
Wards murmured in pure awe.
To someone dealing with me for the first time, it seemed like a breathtakingly novel approach.
"Proceed along those lines."
"Understood. Moving on, another congratulatory gift for your assumption of office was delivered by a merchant today. With this, among establishments of a certain size, the only one that has yet to send anything is the Jakumi Firm—"
"Send it back as usual. Next."
"Understood. Next, there is a petition requesting that the Governor-General name a newly opened shop—"