"Columbus III."
Ryan still remembered that emperor's barony coronation ceremony for Ryan Clayton.
The Empire's nobles held His Majesty the Emperor in inexplicable awe, because his methods were iron-handed, because his prestige was immense, and because aside from his unwillingness to take the blame, he had almost no flaws at all.
He had even come close to truly becoming the Grand Emperor of Light, wielding both divine and royal authority.
His power and prestige within the Empire had reached their peak. By himself, he had transformed the Florian Empire from a system of enfeoffment into one founded on feudal rule.
From his time onward, power began to centralize as never before. The authority of Columbus IV and Columbus V had all been built upon the foundations Columbus III left behind, and perhaps—they had not added much innovation of their own.
If he were still alive, the Florian Empire would have become a true machine of civilization, carrying the entire world like a fierce dragon toward a future even Ryan could not see clearly.
After all, this was a world with extraordinary powers. Such powers had brought enormous changes to civilization, and it was certainly vastly different from the memories of that distant other world.
Unfortunately, he was dead.
Yet although Columbus III had died, the plans he left behind for the Empire's future had not vanished with him. Both the Four Grand Dukes and the Imperial House had preserved those things well.
Human civilization would continue moving forward through conflict. All of this was because, after the Deities disappeared, the brilliance of human spirituality had blossomed.
Faith in the Deities had suppressed humanity's creativity, providing them only with the energy of belief.
After They fell asleep, this world had changed beyond recognition in barely a century.
The Empire's changes were