No Entry Except for the Master - Chapter 11
“So, you’re saying this rabbit is a chimera?” Cesar asked, his expression incredulous as he looked back and forth between the rabbit and Teia.
Teia nodded grimly, his brow furrowed in frustration. Both men sighed heavily.
“Are you sure it wasn’t just a dream? Or maybe you were half-asleep and confused?” Cesar suggested hopefully.
“I personally washed my c*m off that rabbit. Do you need more proof?” Teia retorted dryly.
Cesar cleared his throat awkwardly, at a loss for words.
Meanwhile, the rabbit seemed oblivious to the tension in the room, happily munching on a large carrot, its butt wiggling contentedly.
“If that rabbit is truly a human-animal chimera, things will get complicated,” Cesar warned.
“Because it’s an illegal and highly controversial practice in the empire. Not to mention the sensitive history involved,” Teia agreed.
The creation of chimeras and the history of the beastfolk were deeply intertwined with the Aesper Empire.
Fifty years ago, the eastern edge of the Aesper Empire was home to the now-nameless Lapelia Archipelago. Lapelia was a legendary paradise, home to beastfolk and spirits who lived in harmony with nature.
The beastfolk were beloved by the spirits, who protected them and their lands from outsiders. The harsh natural environment made Lapelia a formidable fortress, impenetrable to invaders.
However, tragedy struck when a human washed up on the shores of Lapelia. The beastfolk king fell in love with the human, granting their every wish and slowly introducing human culture and technology to the isolated archipelago.
This led to the inevitable destruction of the natural environment, angering the spirits who had long protected Lapelia.
Abandoned by the spirits, Lapelia was left vulnerable. Betrayal followed betrayal, culminating in the Aesper Empire’s conquest of Lapelia and the apparent extinction of the beastfolk. The human lover, revealed to be of imperial blood, became the emperor, ushering in a golden age for the empire.
The beastfolk might have faded into legend, remembered fondly by the victorious empire. However, forty years ago, a rebellion rocked the empire to its core, revealing a dark secret.
—
“The leader of the rebellion was taken care of by His Majesty the Emperor, so where did this rabbit come from?”
The rabbit lay sprawled out in utter contentment, patting its full belly. Teia poked at the rabbit, soft and gooey like a melted marshmallow, and muttered.
“Kyuuung.”
Completely unaware of the danger it was in, the rabbit clung affectionately to Teia’s finger, acting all cute.
An unidentified mad dark mage had created chimeras modeled after the legendary werebeast tribe. “We shall reclaim the lost land of the werebeasts!”—that was the justification given by the one who started the rebellion with a chimera army.
He claimed that his chimeras were the werebeasts of legend, but aside from their ability to shift freely between human and animal forms, there was a fundamental difference in their souls. True werebeasts had a single, natural soul.
Chimeras, forcibly fused from humans and animals through dark magic, had two souls entangled within, making the soul sustaining the body extremely unstable.
But the deranged dark mage somehow managed to control these unstable chimeras.
Enhanced dozens of times with the innate instincts and physical abilities of animals, and equipped with human intelligence and dark magic, the chimeras plunged the entire Empire into terror.
Even the highly trained elite Imperial Army struggled to deal with them.
Three years after the rebellion began, a quarter of the Empire had fallen to the dark mage. Countless Imperial citizens were slaughtered by the werebeast chimeras. It was no longer just a civil war—it had taken the form of a racial war.
Then, a savior appeared.
Though of imperial blood, he was from a collateral branch and the child of a fallen noble, so no one even knew of his existence. But this teenage boy turned the tide of war.
A genius in both magic and swordsmanship, his arrival marked the beginning of the Empire’s comeback.
The boy realized the dark mage was using an ancient ritual to control the chimeras. Using this knowledge, he reversed the technique and triggered the chimeras into a frenzy.
Freed from the mage’s control, the rampaging chimeras fought amongst themselves and self-destructed, making them easy to eliminate.
Just a year after the boy’s appearance, the never-ending civil war was quickly brought to a close. In the end, the dark mage, cornered by the Imperial Army, self-destructed, and the hellish conflict came to an end.
The boy, now a war hero, quickly gained the Empire’s support, overturned the line of succession, and became Emperor. That very man was Teia’s biological father—the current Emperor. The Empire recovered swiftly, but the scars of war still remained in the people’s memories.
