SSS-Class Revival Hunter-Chapter 220: The Golden Rule (4)

I took one last look at the girl. The world around Viscountess Amethyst and I kept changing rapidly, going from the snowy street where Marchioness Snowhite Rabbit tore the air with her whip, to the cave where Viscountess Pure Sacrednoir ripped corpses apart and ate human flesh, all the way to the battlefield where Viscountess Great Prawn Pearl commanded her army to massacre both soldiers and civilians.

“Kill every one of them!”

A general’s competence consisted of two factors: being good at killing people and having no hesitation to do so. Great Prawn Pearl was a very capable general.

“This is the village of rebels, and we can’t tolerate any information about our military operations being leaked. It doesn’t matter if they are farmers or poor commoners. Do not take their status, gender, or age into consideration. Wipe them all out! I’ll take full responsibility.”

Thousands of cavalry tracked down and killed the rebels. Surrounded by the soldiers, the villagers quivered. There were actual rebels among them, but most of the people there simply thought that their lord had started a war.

“Please spare us! We are just country bumpkins who don’t know anything!”

A politician’s competence lay in distinguishing between friend and foe so they could take care of their allies. Great Prawn Pearl was an incompetent politician. Humans became terribly cruel when they were competent in one way and incompetent in another.

“Burn them.”

The village was set on fire. The wooden fences built to protect the villagers had become their prisons. They tried to escape through the gaps between the wooden fences, but the kingdom’s soldiers gripped their long spears and stabbed the villagers back inside.

“Dear lord!”

The black smoke smothered the women and old men in their own homes. Soot invaded the old village chief’s lungs. Until his last moment, the village chief wasn’t sure if he should have rebelled against his lord. Would his and the villagers’ deaths have been more peaceful if the lord’s army had killed them? Was there another choice he could have made?

“Please save us, lord...”

Amethyst was sitting on the highest branch of a distant tree. As she herself had declared, she was a goddess who didn’t help anyone even if she could afford to do so. The unmovable goddess—that was who she was.

She was still holding my wrist.

“Viscountess, please help them. It’s unfair,” I begged her.

“I know.”

“Why should General Great Prawn Pearl live and the villagers die? Why are the commoners the only ones suffering an agonizing death?”

I activated my aura and tried to break free from her grasp, but her soft grip never let go of my wrist. As a goddess, she was much stronger than me.

“Advisor, there is no reason anyone lives, suffers, or dies. I refuse to believe something like that exists.”

“Then...”

“But it seems like you people sometimes need someone to blame.”

The village burned down, and the ashes flew all the way into the forest. Amethyst raised her hand and gently plucked some gray ash from the air. “You people can’t accept the fact that everything in the world is a coincidence, can you? Someone’s malice caused your misfortune, and someone else manipulated others to be successful. Therefore, you deserve to be pitied, and others deserve to be cursed in every way possible, right?”

The surrounding scenery changed again.

“You’re right. I’ll make it so you’re right.”

We were back in the kingdom’s assembly chamber. Other witnesses that Countess Towerfang Tiger had requested entered. The old man who had lost his granddaughter was just the beginning. Towerfang Tiger seemed to have mobilized all her power, or rather the power of her entire faction, to find more victims. Among them were also descendants of the people who had lost their hometowns because of Great Prawn Pearl.

“Your misfortunes didn’t happen for no reason. They happened because I chose to turn a blind eye to them.”

The chamber became increasingly chaotic. Towerfang Tiger took the lead in condemning Amethyst with many nobles rallying behind her to criticize Amethyst.

“Yes, Viscountess Amethyst hasn’t committed any of these crimes!” Towerfang Tiger declared eloquently. “But the viscountess harbors criminals. She can’t even use the excuse of not knowing about her subordinates' past deeds. She knew the whole time.

“Why are you protecting Marchioness Snowhite Rabbit, Viscountess? Why have you taken a cannibal under your wing? Their crimes are as clear as day, but you’re protecting them. Doesn’t that also make you a great evil-doer?”

Although Towerfang Tiger didn’t dare to say it out loud, the list of criminals also included the Sun Queen, who was sitting on the throne. As a monarch, she had incarcerated herself for sixty years. Under the Sun Queen’s no rule, nothing stopped the landowners from exploiting the farmers and the nobles extorting the citizens in their territory. During the sixty years of the queen’s neglect, civil unrest and rebellions brewed in the kingdom.

The Sun Queen was silent, but she wasn’t the only guilty one. The Unconditioned Duchess had spent a millennium as an Ascendant and committed numerous massacres during the years. All of the six duchesses had blood on their hands. Not a single person among the hundreds of nobles gathered in this vast assembly chamber had their hands clean of blood.

“This is all Viscountess Amethyst’s fault!”

Towerfang Tiger wasn’t innocent either. She was a strong warrior and had led her army in several wars. It was impossible not to commit unjust acts of violence on the battlefields. She had ruined many people’s lives and destroyed multiple families, therefore she also carried the misfortune of others on her back.

“How can the viscountess describe the sinner as lovely? How dare she flaunt her love toward the sinner? Even if she regrets her past and helps the kingdom correct her mistakes, that isn’t enough to redeem her!”

Towerfang Tiger was attacking Amethyst, but she was indirectly throwing jabs at all the royal family members and nobles. As a matter of fact, she was also attacking herself.

“The viscountess is a sinner!”

However, Towerfang Tiger wasn’t in pain. Like a hound that licked its blood but was high on battle fever, she tenaciously went after Amethyst.

Amethyst probably knew this better than anyone else, but she didn’t ask “Aren’t you just as guilty as me?” She didn’t even say “We are all sinners.”

However, she said, “Yes, you’re right. It’s my fault.”

As if she were drinking a sweet drink, the young goddess willingly embraced the blame and the victims’ screams.

“I’m a sinner, so I should be punished.”

The evil goddess was happy.

Perhaps Towerfang Tiger was too focused on her speech. If she had paid a little more attention, she would have probably wondered why the nobles in Amethyst’s faction were not fighting back at all. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

“What did you say?” Towerfang Tiger asked, taken aback.

Even though the queen had no authority, she was still the ruler of the kingdom. The law guaranteed her rights. She had plenty of opportunities to stop Towerfang Tiger and take Amethyst’s side. However, the Sun Queen didn’t take the side of her mistress, the only lover she’d had in the past sixty years.

“What’s wrong, Countess? I just told you I agree with you.”

The Unconditioned Duchess was as much of a slaughterer as she was a duchess. Furthermore, she was a woman in power who didn’t regret her massacres one bit. She enjoyed determining people’s fates by rolling her dice. This had been her modus operandi for a very long time and it was likely to remain the same for many years to come.

The only thing that had changed about the duchess was that she no longer rolled her dice when it involved Amethyst. However, the duchess wasn’t defending the pet she had taken in for the first time in a millennium.

“When you say you agree with me—”

Amethyst shrugged. “I agree that everything is my fault and responsibility. Since I’m a sinner, I have to be punished.”

Marchioness Snowhite Rabbit had killed a child when she was young. Now, she was the head of her marquisate. Her family had had exclusive ownership of the capital’s northern port for generations. Thirty percent of the waterways of the Great Lake flowing freely in the middle of the kingdom belonged to the marchioness. She had a lot of money.

Viscountess Pure Sacrednoir, a former cannibal, knew how to use her notoriety well. She removed the mold that had taken deep root in her territory. The landlords who owned windmills were purged, and the influential locals who controlled the waterways were executed. She transferred the ownership of all the windmills and waterways in the territory to her family. Once this was all done, she gave them to the farmers at a very low price. She had a lot of rice.

Viscountess Great Prawn Pearl, a former general of the royal army, had once planned a rebellion within the capital. She was still a great killer. How to divide a united enemy, how to destroy a united territory, how to destroy trained soldiers—she knew all the tricks and skills necessary for war. The viscountess was versatile.

But none of them protected their master. Unless they lacked love for their lover or loyalty to their master, there was bound to be a reason for all of them to remain silent.

“So you acknowledge my accusation?” Towerfang Tiger asked reluctantly.

Amethyst smiled. “Totally. I’m a criminal so heinous that there is no precedent of people like me in the kingdom’s history, so I will submit a bill.”

Nobody defended Amethyst because she had ordered them to remain silent. She turned her head to the side. “Secretary, please hand out the bill.”

Even though Amethyst was notorious for being the lunatic of the Capital, there was no way she could maintain her smile as witnesses testifying against her kept pouring in. If only Towerfang Tiger had paid a little more attention, she would have suspected this was exactly what Amethyst wanted.

“A bill?”

“Yes, I’m proposing a bill based on my faction’s manifesto. The name of the bill is the Golden Rule.”

Towerfang Tiger no longer doubted it. She had been duped.

Royal secretaries came and went, splashing around Amniotic Fluid while handing out papers to nobles of all factions in the chamber, including the artists’ faction, the Foundation faction, the Innerbound faction, and the demi-human faction.

“My dear fellow nobles of the Noble Assembly,” Amethyst began. “Someone may ask, ‘Do we really need a new duchess in this era?’”

Some nobles started flipping through the documents without hesitation. Others didn’t even spare the papers a glance, scowling as if it bothered them to even glimpse at the contents. Among them were the Ludic Duchess, the Ultimate Sword Duchess, the Innerbound Duchess, the Foundation Duchess, and the Blackflame Dragon Duchess. They had definitely seen these documents beforehand.

“My answer is clear: yes, we need a seventh duchess.”

The Pantheon Duchess was the head of the religious faction, the one Countess Towerfang Tiger belonged to. The countess looked up at her faction leader. The duchess, who resembled the Inquisitor, beamed.

“I’m sorry, Countess! Sister asked me to keep this a secret!”

Only then did the countess realize the reason she had easily secured the witnesses and evidence related to Amethyst. It was also evident who had planned the countess’ “victory” today.

The kingdom already belonged to Amethyst.

The goddess, who was taking over the kingdom from the shadows, continued her speech.

“If there are no particular problems in this era, yes, there is no need to establish a new dukedom. But there have been too many rebellions. The smell of blood has piled up for too long, and it isn’t going away. Am I wrong? My dear fellow nobles of the assembly, there have been hundreds of thousands of people involved in the rebellions. Millions of citizens have lost their loyalty to the kingdom. Someone has to take responsibility for this era.”

An impatient noble read the summary written on the last page of the bill first. That only puzzled him, so he went back to the first page.

“The way to take responsibility for the past sixty years is simple. People were sacrificed in the name of the kingdom’s administration. Others were unjustly involved in a rebellion and had not just their life ruined, but their families’ and descendants’ as well. Soldiers were sacrificed for no reason.

“People lost their homes due to migration policies. Others had their property extorted, body parts mutilated, or were forced to leave their hometown. Maybe their relatives died because the royal family or nobles disregarded them. People have suffered species discrimination. There are still plenty of miner and farmer slaves.

“To give some specific examples, over the past sixty years, there have been two punitive expeditions to eliminate the Gold Dragon, one civil war, three rebellions which the noble families started, and chaos caused by rebel organizations such as the Red Fingernails. I’m talking about all the citizens who were involved in these kinds of incidents against their will.”

In other words, she was talking about all the kingdom’s citizens who had been unjustly sacrificed.

“The kingdom accepts full responsibility for their sacrifice and losses. This responsibility will be assigned to the seventh duchess.”

That would be Amethyst. The nobles looked at her.

“The rule of carrying out these responsibilities shall be as follows: those whose lives were ruined by the kingdom can take out their pain onto the seventh duchess to make up for how much they have suffered so far.”

It was torture. The nobles in Amethyst’s faction lowered their heads.

“Here’s how the seventh duchess shall take responsibility. The citizen who wants revenge on the seventh duchess can point out the main culprit who ruined their life and demand that the culprit attends the scene where the Golden Rule is executed. For example, the free citizen Brookstone can force Marchioness Snowhite to attend as a witness.”

It was also revenge.

“And no matter how much the seventh duchess suffers because of the citizen, the witness can never stop the citizen or interfere with the execution of the Golden Rule.”

It was the price of sin. This was why this day was a certain evil goddess’ trauma.

“The time and place for the execution are as follows. At midnight of every December 24th, the day when the Noble Assembly concludes, the seventh duchess will circuit the capital clockwise. It’ll start and end in Platinum Plaza in front of Platinum Tower. During my walk, any citizen of the kingdom, regardless of their age or status, can approach the seventh duchess and request the execution of the Golden Rule.”

Today was December 24th.

“I shall judge whether the citizen has the right to execute the Golden Rule.”

Amethyst had the Ice Dragon’s Breath. Since she could see the other person’s past with her own eyes, she would be able to know if the kingdom truly ruined the life of the citizen in question.

“If they are eligible, I’ll determine exactly how much pain they have suffered and can give back to me. The one whose arm was cut off can have my arm. The person who lost their eye can take my eye. If one execution isn’t enough, they can continue until it is. This will also occur next year, the year after that, and so on.

Amethyst had the Gold Dragon’s Gaze, enabling her to detect the nature and intensity of the other person’s emotions. She would be able to see how much the citizens had suffered because of the kingdom.

“During the Golden Rule’s execution, I’ll be mutilated and will probably not be able to walk properly, so the person who has caused the most suffering to the citizens will be the one to help me walk.”

Amethyst asked everyone in power she had met to love her. Other than that, she requested nothing. Now, when their lover bled, those people in power would have to be the closest to her and smell her blood.

“I submit the following bill to the assembly’s agenda. As the leader of the mirror faction and the head of my family, I duly request that you vote on the bill in accordance with the rights guaranteed to all nobles by the first king. If it is passed, the Golden Rule will go into effect tonight.”

The assembly room was silent except for the sound of running water. It was December, so it was probably snowing outside.

“My dear fellow nobles of the assembly, let’s punish the sinner now.”

National Doomfall Duchess, the future seventh duchess, smiled brightly.