Chapter 795: Chapter 795 - 437: Contracts and Law

Everything Varius had ever been taught, and the legal intuition working in him like instinct, were all resisting this entire chain of argument.In the classics he had studied, order came from the grant of those above, and authority came from the endorsement of the sacred.If power could be lent out and taken back, then law would lose its foundation, loyalty would degenerate into transaction, and the whole world would be left with nothing but naked calculation.This was sophistry - at least it had always been so throughout his life thus far.Varius forced himself to calm down, pushing his emotions back into the depths of his heart, just as he did in the Imperial Court.He rapidly sifted through those familiar arguments in his mind, trying to find a flaw sharp enough to pierce this entire system.A few breaths later, his train of thought suddenly halted.Not because he fully agreed, but because he had finally grasped a seam he could use to refute it.Only then did Varius raise his head, take a deep breath, and speak again: "My lord, in the Imperial Capital, I too have seen countless commoners who cannot even eat their fill.They are slaughtered by Knights, yet still remain obedient; if the weak have no power at all to resist the strong,then why would the strong bother to care about this so‑called contract?"At these words, Louis laughed.The lights outside the window plated his silhouette with a thin, cold edge."You're not wrong. In this Transcendent world, commoners indeed cannot kill an Emperor; even if an entire city is butchered, the strong still sit upon the throne."He walked back to the map and lifted his hand to point at the location of the Imperial Capital."But resistance does not only take the form of drawing a sword. In this world, when the contract breaks, the weak indeed cannot kill the strong.So they choose another path: they stop giving this country anything beyond what is needed to survive."He raised his hand and pointed to the patches of farmland marked on the map."Farmers no longer till their fields deeply.