Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 36

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 36
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At that very moment, Edwin sat sprawled across the imperial throne, watching the familiar spectacle of bickering unfold before him with studied indifference.
Today’s quarrel centered on renegotiating Bellot’s reparations.
The instant the Emperor and Crown Princess announced their decision, the assembled nobles began picking it apart, each convinced of their own rightness.
The first to speak was Harkan, a count related by marriage to Duke Camelot.
“Merely a slight loss of face and halving the reparations? Bellot was the vanguard commander of the Allied Kingdoms. How many Imperial soldiers fell to Bellot’s blades?”
Harkan, who had cowered in his western holdings, making excuses the entire war, only committing forces after the Imperial army had already seized the advantage.
As he declaimed like a stern knight who had spent his youth on the battlefield, Ismail, the Marquis of the Eastern Region, cut in with unconcealed exasperation.
“Who said we favor Bellot? Hundreds are starving in Bellot’s very capital, I’m told. Scrape the royal warehouses and you’ll find barely a handful of grain sacks. What earthly means do you propose to extract what doesn’t exist?”
“Even those handful of sacks ought to be recovered. It is the victor’s rightful due.”
Harkan held his ground, and the confrontation between the two men grew steadily more heated.
“Rightful due, indeed. But how are soldiers with not a crumb of black bread to eat supposed to hold back the Monster Wave? If Bellot cannot contain it, the burden falls entirely to the Empire. Winter is only months away!”
In the end, it was Ismail who commanded the stronger logic.
“That is…”
The moment Ismail invoked the Monster Wave, Harkan’s words dried up.
For over a century, every winter monsters had periodically lost their reason, abandoned their lairs, and invaded settled lands.
During these “Monster Waves,” the creatures became extraordinarily fierce.
Even monsters known to possess no intelligence and no pack instinct showed coordinated movement in winter, making them far more difficult to eliminate.
Mages and monster scholars had investigated the cause of Monster Waves, yet none had uncovered a definitive answer.
All they could do was prepare and hold the line against them as best they could.
The dreaded Monster Wave, returning year after year, was a scourge upon every nation on the continent.
The Empire, at least, had few treacherous mountain ranges suitable as monster habitats to begin with, and regular culls had kept their numbers manageable.
The real problem lay with nations like Bellot, which bordered the Tudik Mountain Range—the monsters’ greatest breeding ground.
Even before Monster Waves began, the Tudik Range swarmed with high-rank monsters.
Nations near the range, drained by Monster Waves, had collapsed one by one.
Now Bellot was the sole kingdom maintaining the succession of rulership in that region—a testament to how ferociously powerful the Tudik monsters were.
Though Bellot had absorbed refugees from other lands and built some defensive infrastructure, thousands of Bellot’s people still perished each year to Monster Waves.
Since Bellot served as a breakwater against this tide, the nobles had split sharply into two camps according to their interests.
The nobility near the Eastern Region, who would face the worst monster incursions if Bellot fell, spoke vehemently in favor of renegotiation.
In contrast, nobles from regions beyond the Monster Wave’s reach—especially those of the Western Region, farthest from Bellot—opposed renegotiation under the banner of Imperial dignity.
Though the Eastern nobles, having much to lose, spoke with fiercer passion, the Western nobles concealed their true greed beneath the rhetoric of honor and showed no weakness.
The Eastern contingent was small in the capital and outnumbered, yet neither side would yield easily, and the hall’s atmosphere grew increasingly turbulent.
Both sides thrust forth their positions and raised their voices until the cacophony became unintelligible noise, echoing through the chamber.
“Enough.”
Edwin intervened, unable to bear it any longer.
As if their clamoring had been mere theater, the great hall fell silent in an instant.
‘Caged dogs bark the loudest, they say.’
Edwin furrowed his brow and exhaled softly.
In any case, which side he would favor had been decided before the conference even began.
Edwin turned to the assembled Western nobles and spoke coldly.
“If these negotiations fail, I will conscript Western soldiers and station them along the Eastern border. If Western forces prove insufficient, I will requisition troops from the Southern and Northern Regions as well.”
Near the Tudik Range, where monsters were particularly abundant, even outside the winter Monster Wave season, individuals driven from territorial disputes frequently descended into settlements and wreaked havoc.
With Bellot weakened by defeat and drought, unable to contain the overflow, monsters were already seeping through Bellot’s territory into Imperial lands—several at a time, even now in summer.
And those numbers were increasing.
When the full Monster Wave arrived in winter, they would increase further.
Facing a single high-rank monster, maddened and vicious, required twenty seasoned knights.
Even the Western Region, the Empire’s most prosperous, could ill afford to lose twenty knights from its fighting strength.
“If you agree to troop deployments, I will reconsider the terms.”
The Western nobles, who had been speaking their minds from safety, fell silent at once.
The nobility had not yet known Edwin for long—only eight years after his return—but they were rapidly learning that the Emperor did not speak in falsehoods.
Should any of them push back against his decision now, Edwin might very well tear up the negotiations with little more than ratification remaining and send Western troops to garrison the treacherous Eastern frontier.
To expend effort on something that brought no direct benefit when the cost was so high made no sense.
The Southern and Northern nobles, who had been quietly supporting the West, withdrew their backing as if they had never spoken at all.
“Then I take it this matter passes by unanimous consent.”
Before any further complaints could emerge, Edwin fixed Harkan—the count who had argued most forcefully against renegotiation—with a warning glance and closed the matter.
Harkan, serving as the Western nobles’ focal point in Camelot’s absence, faltered beneath the weight of Edwin’s presence.
Sensing that prolonging the discussion would only weaken their position further, the Western nobles hastily introduced the next item.
“We understand the Bellot envoy’s arrival has been delayed.”
“The annulment proceedings for the Crown Princess have stalled, I’ve heard.”
“Before winter sets in and the roads freeze, the National Marriage must be completed.”
“But first, surely the bridegroom must be confirmed?”
“Indeed. Even if the ceremony hall is prepared, one cannot conduct a marriage without a groom.”
Now the topic was the National Marriage—between Bellot and the Empire.
Though the subject had shifted abruptly, the manner of the exchange revealed that the speakers had rehearsed their lines in advance.
‘This will drag on as well.’
Edwin glanced toward the window and tapped his fingers with visible displeasure.
Bellot’s lands were barren, rich in no natural resources save one: Monster Byproducts of considerable quality emerged from that blighted realm.
In the Empire, where monsters were scarcer than in other lands, such byproducts commanded slightly higher prices.
Even with Bellot’s current misery, many nobles wished to establish footholds there against better times to come.
‘The reduced reparations mean less Monster Byproducts flowing into the Empire—now they’ll want all the more.’
Each faction was maneuvering to see their favored candidate become Bellot’s bridegroom.
Feigning concern over the dragging marriage, they praised their own candidates and disparaged the others.
The marriage itself was being buried under the weight of the conference.
‘Are they all moonlighting as matchmakers?’
They showed more zeal in this than they did managing their own children’s marriages.
The Western nobles spoke as though Bellot’s reparations were pure Gold Ingots rather than Monster Byproducts of equal weight.
Harkan in particular championed the Western candidate with an intensity usually reserved for one’s own son.
Though his own heir was such a wretch that even Duke Camelot’s backing couldn’t save him—the man had been shuffled off to the temple as a priest, his position secured only by donation.
Even accounting for the Western Region’s scarcity of monsters and the correspondingly higher value of byproducts, their fervor was unseemly.
As if there were some pressing reason they needed vast quantities of Monster Byproducts.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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