Chapter 633

"And then?" Sergei Ivanov asked.

"And then..." Lomonosov Kuragin had no answer.

"Yes, if we returned to our homeland with power and strength, perhaps even with Tierra's blessing if we were lucky enough—returned to the Russian Ministry of Magic—then what?" Sergei Ivanov countered. "What could we do then? Defeat our fathers, defeat our brothers, ascend the throne of power, and become the new rulers?"

"Then our daughters, and our daughters' children, no matter how outstanding or gifted they were, would still ultimately have to swear loyalty to our sons and our sons' children. No matter how talented our illegitimate sons were, they would ultimately be people unfit for the stage, able only to serve as advisers and beg our legitimate children for a wage barely sufficient to keep themselves fed and clothed."

"What would we have changed? Would we have changed ourselves? Oh no, Lomonosov—no, Avdey. We would have changed nothing. The tragedies that befell us would still repeat themselves again and again in the future, perhaps even worse." Sergei Ivanov paused, then continued, "Because of our success, people in the future with the same identities and status as us might suffer even more brutal oppression."

"And all that assumes we could succeed," Sergei Ivanov said gravely. "It assumes that the strength of the three of us, along with that rabble of stray cats and dogs, would be enough to catch a sliver of sunlight beneath the sky blocked out by the deeply rooted tree that is the Romanov Dynasty."

"It's too difficult." Sergei Ivanov sighed. "Even if we possessed power like Tierra's, we would still be unable to support ourselves alone. We would become deeply bound to power, slowly draining away our vitality upon that tree."

The more Sergei Ivanov spoke, the sadder he became. Leaning against an unnoticed