Chapter 795: Chapter 437: Contracts and Law
Everything Varius had ever been taught, and the legal intuition working in him like instinct, were all resisting this entire chain of argument.
In the classics he had studied, order came from the grant of those above, and authority came from the endorsement of the sacred.
If power could be lent out and taken back, then law would lose its foundation, loyalty would degenerate into transaction, and the whole world would be left with nothing but naked calculation.
This was sophistry—at least it had always been so throughout his life thus far.
Varius forced himself to calm down, pushing his emotions back into the depths of his heart, just as he did in the Imperial Court.
He rapidly sifted through those familiar arguments in his mind, trying to find a flaw sharp enough to pierce this entire system.
A few breaths later, his train of thought suddenly halted.
Not because he fully agreed, but because he had finally grasped a seam he could use to refute it.
Only then did Varius raise his head, take a deep breath, and speak again: "My lord, in the Imperial Capital, I too have seen countless commoners who cannot even eat their fill.
They are slaughtered by Knights, yet still remain obedient; if the weak have no power at all to resist the strong,
then why would the strong bother to care about this so‑called contract?"
At these words, Louis laughed.
The lights outside the window plated his silhouette with a thin, cold edge.
"You’re not wrong. In this Transcendent world, commoners indeed cannot kill an Emperor; even if an entire city is butchered, the strong still sit upon the throne."
He walked back to the map and lifted his hand to point at the location of the Imperial Capital.
"But resistance does not only take the form of drawing a sword. In this world, when the contract breaks, the weak indeed cannot kill the strong.
So they choose another path: they stop giving this country anything beyond what is needed to survive."
He raised his hand and pointed to the patches of farmland marked on the map.
"Farmers no longer till their fields deeply. Because an extra bushel of grain will not bring lower taxes; it will only bring heavier exactions.
They sow only enough seed on their own plots for the family to get through winter and barely manage the taxes; anything more they harvest cannot be kept, nor can it be protected."
Louis’s finger shifted toward the workshop districts on the other side.
"It is the same with craftsmen. To repeatedly hone their skills and forge durable tools costs time, effort, and materials.
But these efforts bring them no additional reward.
What they hand over will only be underpriced by the Nobility, skimmed by Knights, even seized outright.
So they work only by the quota and routine; the tools function, but they do not last."
At last his gaze fell upon the regions marked with legions.
"As for Knights, when they discover that charging at the front will not earn them honor, but only see them used as consumables again and again,
when compensation is endlessly delayed, when their fiefs are constantly shaved away, when even their families receive no security after they fall, they will no longer die for their Lord.
They begin to calculate: how much does this battle pay? Is it worth getting hurt? Is there any need to risk my life?"
Louis lowered his hand: "Order begins to hemorrhage from within. Not through rebellion, but through a whole realm quietly withering away."
The red pen was driven hard into the map—right on the Imperial Capital.
"The Empire as it stands now has already reached this point. The strong cannot be slain, but they will be slowly starved to death.
When the foundations have rotted through, no foreign enemy is needed; a single gust of wind, and this giant colossus will topple of its own accord."
Louis drew a simple circle on the map.
"Establish order, overexploit, trust collapses, national strength declines, then comes collapse and destruction; new strongmen arise and establish a new order.
This is the death cycle that has never ceased on this continent for a thousand years, and we are standing right now at the darkest end of this cycle."
Varius remained silent for a long time.
Those words unfolded layer by layer in his mind, like old files being taken out and reviewed anew.
He thought of the Empire’s history of rise and fall, of those familiar scenes that accompanied each imperial succession: heavier taxes, discipline in the legions decaying, workshops shutting down, rebellions flaring up along the borders.
When these fragments were placed within one and the same logical framework, they actually fitted together seamlessly.
They turned out not to be accidents, nor mere moral decay, but a kind of inevitable outcome.
Varius’s lips moved, as though he wished to argue, yet in the end he said nothing at all.
Louis turned to look at Varius; there was no pity in his eyes: "That is why I never intended, from the very beginning, to become a stronger Emperor. That would be nothing more than the starting point of the next cycle."
He lifted his hand and pointed toward the city outside, where lights and steam intertwined: "What I seek to build is a system... In Red Tide, the contract is mutual.
I give them dignity and a path of advancement; they give me creativity and loyalty—not driven by the lash, but by letting them know that if they run forward, there truly is a road."
Varius felt a chill crawl up his spine.
All his life he had defended the dignity of imperial power, convinced that so long as the Emperor was tough enough, the state would not collapse.
Yet Louis’s words seemed to negate all of this at the root.
The most terrifying thing has never been the rebels’ blades, but the silence of the obedient.
That kind of soundless decay is more despairing than a legion’s rebellion.
Varius finally understood that the Old Empire was beyond saving.
His knees went weak, and he dropped heavily into the chair, as though the last ounce of strength had been drained from him.
"So that’s how it is..." Varius was now drenched in sweat. "This is why, no matter how many Knights the Imperial Capital has, they still cannot stop the decline—because the roots... are already dead."
That entire chain of reasoning Louis had laid out was, to him, far too heretical, yet it was calm and rigorous, with no obvious logical cracks.
