The Martial Unity

“A lot happened while you were gone, Julian,” Rui remarked as he quickly gave his brother a brief rundown. “…And so I’m Emperor now.”

Julian did a double-take at everything Rui told him, completely shell-shocked where he stood. “This… this is unbelievable.”

He directed a deep gaze at the royal attire and artifacts that Rui had, along with the strange translucence his body had gained, before heaving a deep breath. He had so many things to say and ask that he didn’t even know where to begin.

“We will speak more in depth later, Julian,” Rui promised. “But now that I’m Emperor, I don’t have as much free time as I used to, so it may not be immediately, but I promise we will have a proper talk.”

“Hehe, you already sound like an Emperor, Your Majesty,” Kane grinned at him. “I’m looking forward to your rule.”

Rui smiled back at the man. “Thank you, Kane. I promise that we’ll have a one-on-one some day once I’m out of the busiest phase of the transition. Also, drop the honorifics. It sounds weird coming from you.”

Once he bade goodbye to a still-stunned Julian and his best friend, Secretary Claris immediately turned towards him with a pointed gaze.

“Your Majesty, we need to get to work immediately,” she remarked with a serious tone of voice. “The very first thing you will need to undergo is the royal initiation briefing right away, as we discussed, followed by the foreign intelligence briefing. After that, the endless mountain of work you must attend to will only just begin.”

Rui nodded with a serious expression.

The royal initiation briefing was a confidential information and intelligence briefing on the Kandrian Empire, including its highest secrets and classified information. Things such as locations of important secret facilities, bases, secret underground infrastructure, military secrets, political secrets, and so on and so forth.

An Emperor needed to be fully brought up to speed on all these hidden and secret realities in order to effectively govern a nation. Once the mandatory initiations and briefings were complete, his immediate next priority was the domestic crises born from the war.

Numerous plans for reconstructions of cities, inter-city and regional infrastructure would be proposed, along with comprehensive plans for the maritime and naval reconstruction. Economic legislation to stimulate the economy and get rid of the economic crisis in the short-term would also become a priority. He would need to approve all of them and accelerate the process.

Now that he was Emperor, he would also have to give many different addresses regarding the nearly one million people who were confirmed to be dead from the massive, destructive tsunami that had swept the eastern coast. Otherwise, he would be seen as a heartless emperor who had no love for his people.

Simultaneously, he would have to prepare for implementing his vision in the long run, starting with creating two new ministries, the Ministry of People and the Ministry of Harmony, to be led by Prince Raul and Princess Ru. He would need to create an independent organization that would focus on enforcing law and order in the Martial World. He would need an intelligence division, a judiciary, an enforcement department comprising Martial Artists, and so on and so forth.

And since this was a vision independent of the Kandrian Empire, it would have to be a private organization, which would make it even more difficult to handle.

There were many, many things that he would need to do in the long run, so much so that he expected to be fully swamped with work for at least a year before things could finally cool down.

In that time, he needed to make sure that he found a chief minister who could serve as his chief executive officer for the government, someone who understood his thinking inside out and could be trusted to represent his own will and nothing else. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do in a short amount of time; he had already informed Secretary Claris to conduct such a wide search for a fitting person.

Until then, it was all him. He was fine with that; he had resolved himself to step up to the job, and he would have never chosen to become Emperor.

The only thing that gave him pause was the person he cared most for in the entire world.

“Amare…” He walked towards her with a hint of sorrow at the fact that he couldn’t be with her as much as he would have liked.

She smiled at him reassuringly as her hand swept across his face. “I’ll be fine. Do what you must.”

His expression softened as a smile emerged on his face. “…I’ll be back tonight.”

He threw a glance at Bodhisattva Maitreyi, who didn’t leave her granddaughter’s side for even a second. She simply nodded at him silently with determination in her eyes.

She would not let anything happen to Amare while she was in this delicate state. He threw a deep gaze into Amare’s eyes one last time, pulling her into a warm embrace before eventually bidding her goodbye and walking away with Secretary Claris and others of his faction.

His work as Emperor had only just begun. While he dove into the royal initiations, the rest of the Kandrian Empire had already entered into a celebrative mood.

Outside the royal palace, the mood in the streets was so high that one would not have been able to guess that this was a nation that had suffered the loss of nearly a million people.

Yet, the celebrative atmosphere was one of desperate hope and optimism. That Rui, as Emperor, would be able to fix everything and restore the unscathed sense of prosperity that the nation had before. Although the tragic death of so many people and the destruction of many cities, towns, villages, and settlements would never go away entirely, they still hoped for better.

The local press wisely fueled hope and optimism in their messaging, increasing the morale of the people for the first time in a long, long time.