He was at his limit. Attempt after attempt after attempt, each one less successful than the last. He shaped the entire course of the world's history just to achieve his goals, and for what? Nothing! Nothing at all! The girl prayed, sure, but out of necessity for survival rather than actual desire to do so. He was practically just forcing her to pray at that point. If he was able to force the world to pray he would have no issues; unfortunately that would defeat the point of it all.
He had gotten desperate now, going so far as to create an effective abomination of a girl with powers far exceeding what should be possible. Even then, the girl blessed and assigned to strike down the devil failed at the first opportunity she got. In hindsight, he probably could’ve picked a better candidate, but the fact remains that in just one battle she was already dead.
It was all so exhausting for him. At times it felt like he was struggling more than she was. It was obvious now that no matter how dire her straits were, she would not fully commit herself to prayer. Whether or not a normal person would was another question, but at this point he was certain that she would rather die than willingly commit herself to him just out of sheer spite.
The experiment, it seemed, was a failure. Though it had evolved far beyond it, now it was a matter of his own spite and rage seeping over into what was otherwise a simple test. Nevertheless, he couldn’t just kill her, or rather he wouldn’t. Just killing her off would be a complete humiliation. Sure, she would be gone, perhaps spending an eternity in suffering, but she would be laughing the entire time. Frankly it was better to let the world be, to simply banish it out of his reach. The world, after all, had failed him. It was meant to make her submit and it had failed at that. Such a world that failed to obey their creator’s simple demands had no place among his domains.
And so he cast out the world, letting it drift off into isolation, disconnected from the rest of his worlds and free from his influence. In time he would forget the girl—the atheist he so despised—and while he was not happy with this result, at least he didn’t give her the pleasure of laughing about her victory in his face.
He was done, the world was free, and a girl had won against a god.
What a wonderful thing victory is, truly the sweetest feeling one can enjoy. Of course while the Empire has been celebrating its own victory over its enemies in the Great War, I have been celebrating a victory of my own over Being X. At first I wasn’t sure he was gone completely, but when my Type 95 started working without prayer… well there was no way he would allow that.
He hasn’t said anything for a very long time, and if I had to pin a time when I believe he actually left, it would have to be when I killed that girl in Tiegenhof. There was no doubt Being X had buffed her powers to unrealistic proportions. Ultimately, endless power in the hands of a moron will get you nowhere, and she died to a single bullet in the head (after many other bullets around her body failed to actually kill that monster).
In the years that followed I found myself rising the ranks of the general staff faster than I ever had before. While it was true that I was still a child, there was no doubt that my skills had long since been recognized by the general staff, the only thing keeping me back was Being X’s interference. Without that, I quickly rose to the rank of General by late 1927. Some saw it as an outrageous move to promote someone, let alone a child, so quickly to such a rank, however I would quickly show them all that my promotion was well deserved.
As the General Staff began eyeing up an offensive to cut off the caucasus, a region rich in both oil and the rare materials needed to make Computation Orbs, I made sure that I was placed in charge of the entire offensive. Again some were skeptical, but there was no way in hell I was going to allow anyone to make the same mistake that was made in my own world.
In the end, a mixture of my own strategies, competence, and a bit of partisan help from Volga Imperials which resided within the Rus (at least before many of them were deported by the Federation to Siberia), the city of Josefgrad managed to fall, and with it was a cascading effect which saw the caucasus fall and the Imperial war machine begin to completely overrun the Rus in a large-scale offensive in the summer of 1928.
After the complete failure of a Russy counter-offensive in December of 1928, the Russy government was briefly overthrown by one of its own field marshals who agreed to signing a peace with the Empire in March 1929. The treaty of Berestye would officially see the creation of numerous new states in Eastern Europe, all of which were created from the Empire’s “Good Neighbor Friendship Policy.” Just a few months later, Russy would devolve into another civil war.
My fear when peace was signed was that the Empire would seek at least some control over these new states, causing it to overstretch itself with a massive sphere of puppet-states in Europe, likely leading to its eventual overstrain and collapse. Fortunately, the state heeded my and many others’ advice in handling the east. The new states created would be fully independent, with each one having the choice to willingly join an alliance created by the Empire, the ‘Europakt’, or simply be on neutral terms with the Empire.
Of the many states created by the Treaty of Berestye, many states opted to become allies of the Empire. Of these were Livland, a state created within the northern Baltic, Lettowen, a state created out of my world’s Lithuania, Ruthenia, made from my world’s Belarus, Ukraina, made from my world’s Ukraine, and Volga, a region around the Volga river which held a large number of Imperials.
Three other states were also created within the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Azov, and Ciscaucasia all still maintaining friendly relations with the Empire while maintaining close trading arrangements over oil and magical gemstones.
Dacia too even joined the Europakt, primarily as it was decided that the Empire’s “Good Neighbor Friendship Policy” would apply to them as well, leading to the Empire supporting Dacia in its military and economic modernization and even granting them lands in former Russy land, though some of their border regions were annexed by the Empire.
The next major enemy to strike out was Albion, a nation an entire channel away. Unfortunately, much of the Imperial Navy was hardly in much of a position to even attempt a naval invasion. However, for once it appears Shugel’s work has actually proven useful. Whether it was Being X’s absence or not that changed him, he went from a lunatic mad scientist to just a mad scientist quickly, no longer letting religion blind his work.
Shugel’s rocketry work was not to be underestimated, as by the time the Russy Federation surrendered, he had functional prototypes of rockets ready to be used against Albion. These rockets were launched from the Francois and Legadonian coasts, primarily targeting naval bases and major military sectors. While some rockets faced issues, most hit their targets with relative accuracy. While we were far off from any sort of Jet aircraft, let alone anything nuclear, we were showing Albion that there was nothing they could do against us.
In a sort of one last ‘hurrah’, mostly for morale and propaganda purposes, I was assigned to my 203rd for one more series of raids against Albion in the final months of the war. These raids were mostly effective; Albion quickly wore out much of its mage force early on, leaving only their anti-air, and to a lesser extent, their aircraft to impede the ‘Mage Blitz’.
If there’s two things that mages have better than aircraft, it's accuracy and agility. Once the bulk of Albion’s mages were exhausted, killed, or injured, the Empire could send out most of its mage force out to bombard targets throughout Albion, crippling most of its naval institutions, military bases, and industrial sectors.
In just a few months, Albion went from a nation more than capable of fighting off the Empire alone with the morale to back it to a nation which was quickly seeing its military might reduced without even firing a single shot towards the enemy aside from basic anti-air, with a population losing more morale by the day since Russy’s surrender. By early September, Albion agreed to sign a ‘Respectful Peace’ with the Empire, which while seeming like a glorified ‘white peace’ settlement, was almost certainly an Imperial Victory. Small amounts of colonial possessions were transferred over, Albion had to pay (fairly mild) war reparations, and ultimately abandon their allies in the Francois by pulling out of the war.
Despite some hopes from Albion and Francois that the Unified States would eventually join the war, the Empire had been putting in significant effort to prevent that. Following the witnessing of US volunteers within the Russy Federation, the Empire began to reach out to the large Imperial-American population within the Unified States, many of whom faced discrimination since the start of the war. While many despised the Empire, blaming them for the war, the Empire managed to successfully convince many that the war was truly a defensive conflict (which it very much was) before using them to launch a pro-neutrality campaign with the Imperial-Ameircans at its center. This was ultimately fairly successful, as US public opinion shifted from vigorously anti-Imperial to a more neutral stance, with Imperial-Americans slowly seeing a return to normalcy, though this would effectively help cement the ‘Imperial Bund’ as a political force in the coming years.
Now left without an actual proper country to fight on their side, the exiled governments of Legadonia and Francois were both forced to surrender roughly a month later, officially signing a final (and true) armistice on 10AM on the 10th of October before negotiations began later that month.
As the Empire began debating on how to handle the treaties, two clear sides began to form. Moderates such as myself who could see clearly that too harsh of punishments would only lead to inevitable conflict with our former enemies as the peace would only seek to anger them and push them against us. Opposed to us moderates were the Hard-liners or ‘Radicals’ who sought fierce punishments, believing doing so would prevent the Empire’s enemies from ever rising again.
In regards to both the Francois and Legadonia, it was difficult to keep the radicals in check. The deal with Francois was ultimately enough to appease them, seeing border regions annexed, the transfer of some central colonies in the southern continent, during which I accidentally coined the phrase ‘Africa’ to refer to it, and a large demilitarization zone stretching from the Alps to the channel. A sizable amount of war reparations and military restrictions were placed on the Francois, though of all the stimulations of the treaty, these latter two would never be properly followed through, though the demilitarized zone at least remains to this day.
Legdonia, meanwhile, no longer exists. Rather, the states of Swedeland and Noreg took its place. This, as opposed to what I speculated, seems to have been a fairly peaceful solution. Both states hold somewhat significant cultural differences, with the only thing keeping them together being the nationalist ideas spread by the (now collapsed) nationalist Legadonian government. When that government failed, so too did some of the ideas of a unified Legadonia. While resistance to Imperial occupation would continue for some time, the eventual introduction of the Good Neighbor Policy would see the region grow more compliant.
Aside from this, some of the disputed territory as well as a major island in the central Baltic Sea were annexed by the Empire, something that was ultimately expected to occur regardless.
For a brief time, there was peace and stability in Europe. It only took Francois about a month to end this. Throughout the war, partisans, mostly left-leaning in ideology, had been fighting a fairly sizable anti-Imperialist sabotage campaign. While they ultimately didn’t accomplish much in the grand scheme of things, when the former republican government returned from the Southern Continent, their popularity within the mainland was practical non-existent, with socialists quickly seizing control over Parisii and forcing the Republican government back to the Southern Continent, which it still hadn’t fully moved out of. Since then, there have been two Francois governments, one in Africa and one in Europe. Nevertheless, while the Empire did get this new ‘Francois Commune’ to accept the signed treaty, they never fully adopted all of its demands, primarily around military restrictions and reparations.
Despite the Empire’s own attempts to isolate the revolution to just France, it quickly bled over into Ildoa and Albion. In Albion, anger over the nation’s surrender after spending so many years fighting in a war which one could argue they had nothing to gain in only to lose led many to oppose the government. When the Francois fell to socialists, many began to gain their own ideas of revolution, becoming inspired by the Francois and eventually overthrowing Albion, forcing the royalist government to flee overseas to their North American colony in Albionoria.
With two former empires collapsing to revolution, the Empire was left to reap the profits, seizing large colonial territories, even more than they gained in the treaties, even obtaining more colonies in East Asia as the Albion hold over the islands of south-east asia briefly waned. In the Southern Continent, what was formerly a fairly sizable but relatively modest series of Imperial colonies in the center of the continent grew into a single, massive entity named ‘Zentralafrika’, a grand Imperial colony now headed and managed by the war hero General von Romel.
While the Empire began to prosper, other nations in Europe struggled, particularly Ildoa, who had politically stayed neutral throughout the war as their foreign policy seemed to swap from pro to anti Imperial throughout it, became engulfed in a civil war. There seems to be numerous reasons for this, and while they never joined the war (despite the Empire giving them portions of Francois land as a ‘gift’ in the later treaty), it seems internal political factions tore the nation apart.
The Nationalist faction which controlled the government for much of the war collapsed towards the end of it, causing a political vacuum to occur within the nation. This led to a three-way struggle for influence between monarchists which favored the king, liberals which favored democracy, and strangely enough the church, which had seemingly become more anxious to secure whatever influence it could in the most recent years. Perhaps the absence of their ‘god’ has caused them anxiety. For a while, this turmoil remained a silent political chess game of sorts until the socialists came in and flipped the board, unifying the mostly disunited leftist groups in Ildoa into a single faction which utilized the political turmoil to collapse Ildoa into a civil war.
The Ildoan civil war ended in a stalemate. In the north, a socialist government was established backed by the Francois Commune and Albion Union. In the south, a republican/liberal government was established backed by the Francois Republic and Albionoira. In the North-East, a monarchist government was established through the aid of the Empire, and around Rome, the church managed to secure a sort of ‘Papal State’ around the city. Tensions remain high across the peninsula, but for now, the armistice seems to be holding.
Other conflicts seem to be erupting around the world, usually smaller in scale though there are some significant ones. In Europe, Magna Rumeli’s hold on much of the Balkans has waned and two new states have been created from its collapse. However, due to conflicts with almost all of their neighbors, it's likely the newly formed Bulgar Empire will not last long.
In East Asia, the Akitsushima Dominion and Huaxia seem on the verge of war as Huaxia itself is split between a Nationalist and a Communist government along with numerous other competing warlords. Furthermore, in East Asia, the remnants of the Russy Federation remain within Siberia, though many disputed border regions with Manshu and their overlord the Akitsushima Dominion being seized during the civil war.
Lastly in America, the Grand Recession has brought about a period of economic and political turmoil to the Unified States over the last few years, causing the rise of many radical political factions as well as leading to the political unification of Imperial-Americans throughout much of the northern and central US into a single entity, the ‘Imperial Bund’ under the leadership of Vera Mitrohina.
For the Empire and its allies, however, this is an era of peace and prosperity… But it won’t last. The ‘Old Guard’ is too stubborn to realize the mess they’ve gotten themselves into. While the Empire now has many new allies at its side, it still holds the same old enemies right around the corner. If nothing is done soon, or if no steps are taken to prepare, the Empire may well be heading into yet another war.
But what’s the rush, after all? Acting too fast will only accelerate the coming war. Besides, convincing some of these stubborn morons that their ‘Grand Victory’ won’t last too long won’t be an easy feat, but at least for now, while the world still continues to recover from their own turmoil, we have time.
The bell does not toll just yet.
Damn, I really need to catch up with Youjo Senki. I remember reading Skythewood's translations throughout the YEARS, but they stopped once the official translation started. Really takes me back.