Chapter 543: Where the Dream Began

Morin initially thought flipping through one or two cabinets would be enough to sort out the events in the Great Rus Empire.

However, when he opened the second filing cabinet, he realized things were far from that simple.

The categorized folders concerning the internal situation of the Great Rus Empire alone were countless, ranging from politics, economics, military, and ethnic issues to activity logs of various revolutionary parties...

The Saxon Empire's complex official archival classification and numbering rules made the search process quite challenging.

Moreover, the source of a massive amount of these archives wasn't official documents obtained through formal channels, but handwritten logs labeled "Crisis Traveler Reports."

These "Crisis Travelers" were essentially unofficial personnel the Saxon Empire dispatched into Rus to gather intelligence during sensitive periods.

Previously, when Archduke Ferdinand was blown up by a fireball in Sarajevo, as nations mobilized, the Saxon Empire dispatched a large number of "Crisis Travelers" to the Gallic border...

Because the Saxon Empire lacked a comprehensive spy training mechanism at the time, most of these "Crisis Travelers" sent to the Great Rus Empire were military personnel familiar with the Russian language and their family members.

In plain terms, they were a bunch of professionally untrained amateurs relying on guts and luck to gather information in a chaotic foreign country.

Morin pulled open a drawer containing the original handwritten logs. Inside was a massive collection of categorized logs; some were complete notebooks, but most were just a few loose pages cobbled together.

The edges of some pages bore distinct brown stains—dried and hardened, clearly dried blood.

Flipping through other logs, the handwriting would abruptly end on a certain page, with the remaining pages completely blank.

Morin silently closed this log and opened a few envelopes next to it.

Some logs featured handwriting so illegible it was practically unreadable; others bore water stains and mud. The cover of one log even bore the slash marks of a sharp weapon, cutting through several pages inside.

Clearly, the work of those "Crisis Travelers" in Rus had not been easy.

Especially around the outbreak of the revolution, checkpoints set up by various factions within the Rus Empire were extremely strict. Foreigners deemed even slightly suspicious could be arrested or executed on the spot.

Flipping through these blood-stained logs, Morin couldn't help but feel a tinge of melancholy.

The names of these people rarely appeared in any public records. They lived on a knife's edge, likely without even an official designation, and he wondered how much compensation the Empire provided them.

However, melancholy aside, Morin quickly noticed a practical problem.

Because the handwriting and preservation conditions of the original logs varied greatly, the official transcribed archives had glaring information gaps at many key points, leaving only a small footnote: "Original document damaged, illegible."

Fortunately, Morin wasn't fighting alone.

"...Activate!"

As Morin began rapidly scanning all the original materials he could find, the system's 【Intelligence】 and 【Information】 interfaces went into overdrive, rapidly generating entries to complete and correct the blurry information.

While the system wasn't omnipotent and sometimes required sufficient basic information as a "seed" to generate results, in situations like this, where a massive amount of fragmented data already existed, its completion efficiency was staggeringly high.

More importantly, this completed information appeared directly in Morin's mind, becoming a part of his brain's stored information, accessible at will.

And the first piece of completed information that slightly surprised him concerned Magic Crystal Ores.

In Morin's previous understanding, the fall of Magic Crystal Ores from space onto this world was a one-time event.

But that wasn't the case.

According to the information completed by the 【Intelligence】 interface, extraterrestrial Magic Crystal Ores fell at least six more times in the decades following the initial fall in the 3rd century, each with a different scope and scale.

The Great Rus Empire's absurdly vast territory gave them a massive probabilistic advantage.

With such a huge expanse of land, even if the stones fell randomly, they were bound to catch a few.

And a larger territory also meant the richness of underground mineral veins wouldn't be poor, allowing them to excavate a portion of radiant crystal ores as well.

In contrast, the Saxon Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire... situated in the central region of Europa, barely caught any across several waves of meteors.

"Heh... Talk about bad luck..."

As for humans discovering and mastering magic, that wouldn't happen until much later, confirming the speculation that Magic Crystal Ores subtly altered the planet's environment over time.

Morin shook his head, refocusing his attention on the intelligence regarding the Great Rus Empire.

1853 to 1856, the First Crimean War. This period of history aligned closely with the trajectory of the world before his transmigration.

With outdated equipment and terrible logistics, the Great Rus Empire was thoroughly thrashed by the combined forces of the Holy Britannia Empire and the Gallic Republic. The Sevastopol Fortress fell, and the Black Sea Fleet was nearly wiped out.

The outcome of the war rang an alarm bell for Tsar Alexander II, prompting him to initiate massive domestic reforms.

The archives detailed this period extensively. After all, relations between the Saxon and Rus Empires were relatively normal at the time, and much information was acquired through standard diplomatic channels.

Abolishing serfdom, strengthening their own magitech, importing radiant crystal technology, establishing modern factories, expanding the military...

Morin read down the list, finding it increasingly intriguing.

The reform path of the Rus Empire in this world was far more radical than in his memory.

In the world before his transmigration, Tsarist Russia's reforms were basically patchwork, with most energy spent on military expansion.

But Alexander II and Alexander III of this world genuinely wanted to overhaul the nation's foundation.

The Trans-Siberian Railway project was initiated by Alexander III immediately after importing Saxon radiant crystal drive technology in 1891.

But implementing reforms is never easy, no matter the era or nation.

So, the archives unsurprisingly recorded a massive amount of internal turmoil within the Empire during this period...

The old nobility allied with the Church to oppose the abolition of serfdom. Emerging factory owners and bankers used the reforms to crazily enclose land and amass wealth. Ethnic minorities in the borderlands grew restless in the gaps created by a loosening centralized power structure.

After nearly forty years of reform, when Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894, while many results had been achieved, the problems had also accumulated to a critical point.

Morin found a particularly interesting document.

It was the "Annual Political Report on Rus" submitted to Dresden by the Saxon Ambassador to St. Petersburg in 1896.

The wording of the report was extremely restrained, but the information revealed between the lines exposed the internal rot of this massive empire.

"Trust between the nobility and the imperial power has dropped to freezing point."

"The working class's hatred toward capital is accumulating at a visible rate."

"Incidents of unrest in rural areas have tripled compared to last year."

"Separatist movements in border regions like the Caucasus are no longer small-scale underground activities."

The Ambassador's conclusion was a warning to the Saxon high command: "The social tearing within the Rus Empire has reached a highly dangerous level. Any sudden incident could become the spark that ignites the entire powder keg. The Empire must prepare contingency plans regarding whether to intervene."

Unfortunately, this report was dated 1896, while the revolution didn't actually erupt until 1910—a gap of fourteen years.

During those fourteen years, the Great Rus Empire under the last Tsar, Nicholas II, ironically experienced what was called its "last golden age."

The radiant crystal industry developed rapidly, magitech advanced by leaps and bounds, and St. Petersburg and Moscow increasingly resembled modern Western European metropolises... Moscow even began planning the construction of a subway system.

In the world before his transmigration, the Moscow Metro didn't open until 1935.

Looking solely at economic data, the Great Rus Empire did indeed experience rapid growth during that decade.

But Morin saw another set of numbers behind the economic data... the inflation rate, the wealth gap, and the annual number of worker strikes.

The growth was real, but so was the tearing.

A memorandum in the archives even recorded the observations of a Saxon merchant in Moscow: "...On one side of the street are luxuriously decorated department stores; on the other, the low, dilapidated shanties of the workers' district. They are separated by only a single avenue, yet seem like two different worlds."

The superficial prosperity ultimately couldn't cover the cracks at the bottom.

And what truly ripped those cracks wide open was the Second Crimean War, which broke out in 1908.

The Ottoman Empire, one of the victors of the First Crimean War, far from turning its fortunes around with that victory, accelerated its decline amidst internal strife and external threats over the following forty years.

Various Balkan ethnicities launched successive uprisings, leaving the Ottoman Empire's control over those regions tottering.

Meanwhile, the Great Rus Empire, acting as the "Protector of Orthodox Christianity," secretly supported the Slavic peoples of the Balkans, attempting to extend its influence into the Mediterranean.

Far away in the Atlantic, the Holy Britannia Empire naturally wouldn't sit idly by.

A Great Rus Empire with free access to the Mediterranean posed a direct threat to Britannian naval hegemony.

The covert geopolitical maneuvering between the two sides dragged on for years until the 1908 incident finally detonated the powder keg.

Constantinople, Hagia Sophia.

This ancient church, famous for its architecture in Morin's old world, held a completely different significance in this one.

It was a "holy site" for Orthodox Alchemists. Beneath it lay a special mana source referred to by the Orthodox Church as the "Holy Fire."

Based on archival descriptions, it seemed to be some naturally formed mana node... No one could clearly explain the principles behind it, but Orthodox Alchemists had studied there for generations without issue.

Until one day in 1908, the "Holy Fire" inexplicably went out of control.

Rampant mana swept through the entire city of Constantinople. A massive number of civilians and Orthodox Alchemists attempting to stabilize the situation were killed.

The Ottoman Empire's own court mages and alchemists lacked the strength to suppress the disaster, plunging the city into chaos.

The Great Rus Empire immediately leaped forward in its role as "Protector of Orthodox Christianity," declaring it would send more alchemists and paladins to Constantinople to assist.

The Ottoman Empire naturally refused... Let the Russians in? How was that any different from inviting a wolf into the house?

Relations between the two deteriorated sharply, and then the situation suddenly escalated.

Several Rus Orthodox priests and alchemists who had privately traveled to Constantinople to render aid were assassinated shortly after arriving.

When the news reached St. Petersburg, public opinion boiled over.

And Tsar Nicholas II believed the opportunity had arrived. It was time for the Empire, having lain dormant for forty years, to make the nations of Europa "feel fear again."

At the end of 1908, both sides mutually declared "Holy War."

The Second Crimean War officially broke out.

Throughout the process, the Britannians continued to secretly aid the Ottoman Empire. The Saxon Empire, rising rapidly after winning the "Franco-Prussian War," sold massive amounts of arms to both sides, making a fortune.

As Morin read the archives, he mentally compared it to the history of his old world.

In that world, Tsarist Russia collapsed because WWI dragged down its economy.

In this world... the Great Rus Empire didn't wait for a World War; it picked a fight itself.

The early progress of the war was almost entirely one-sided.

Forty years of catching up had brought the Rus army's equipment on par with the European average. Coupled with a vast disparity in national strength, the Russians repeatedly shattered the Ottoman Empire's defensive lines in land battles, advancing triumphantly.

The Great Rus Empire celebrated from top to bottom. Newspapers printed endless articles using words like "Avenge!" and "Revival!" to hype up the atmosphere.

Everyone believed this was the moment to thoroughly wash away the humiliation from over forty years ago.

Then, things started going wrong.

On the advice of Holy Britannia Empire military advisors, the Ottoman Empire abandoned head-on resistance, instead concentrating its forces to continuously attack Rus's maritime supply lines.

The Rus Navy's Black Sea Fleet was heavily battered once again. Losing sea control meant supplies had to be transported via long, grueling overland routes.

It was at this critical juncture... that Kolchak stepped forward.

The first mention of him in the archives was when, as a mid-ranking officer in the Black Sea Fleet, he submitted an operational plan.

The core concept was to abandon traditional fleet engagements and utilize naval mines and new submarines for guerrilla-style harassment.

Then, feign weakness to lure the main Ottoman fleet into a pre-laid minefield near Sevastopol.

To the naval high command at the time, this plan seemed like the "ravings of a madman"...

...Order the fleet to actively avoid battle? Then what did they need a navy for?

But the situation was so dire they had no other choice.

The plan was ultimately approved and, unexpectedly, achieved a resounding victory.

While pursuing a "routing" small-scale Great Rus fleet, the main Ottoman fleet sailed straight into a dense minefield near the waters of Sevastopol.

In a chain of explosions, two capital ships sank on the spot, and several others were severely damaged, losing combat capability.

Control of the Black Sea flipped overnight.

The entire Rus Empire was galvanized. Kolchak's name graced the front pages of all mainstream newspapers for the first time.

But the show wasn't over.

Reeling from the blow, the Ottomans, advised by Britannian consultants, made a decision that took everyone by surprise.

They concentrated their forces and launched an amphibious landing right at Sevastopol—the very place they had just suffered defeat—attempting to replicate their capture of the port during the First Crimean War fifty years prior.

Sevastopol, lacking sufficient garrison troops, was in imminent danger.

Once again, Kolchak stepped up.

He gathered every functional vessel in the port and sent marines ashore to defend the port area to the death. Outnumbered and outgunned, they held the line for three full days and nights.

By the time the main Rus army arrived from inland and launched a counterattack, the Ottoman landing forces were completely boxed into their beachhead and subsequently annihilated.

The outcome of this war... was honestly quite boring.

After fighting for over a year, both sides were exhausted. Under the mediation of various European nations, an armistice was signed, and control over the Crimean region largely returned to its pre-war status.

Even more bizarrely, the "Holy Fire" beneath Constantinople somehow stabilized on its own.

So, looking at the results, the war was a complete "waste of effort" for both participating nations.

For the Great Rus Empire, the cost of the war proved fatal.

The war itself only lasted a little over a year, but it created an absurdly massive financial black hole. Military expenditures far exceeded the pre-war annual budget. The railway system suffered widespread paralysis due to the overload of military transport. Civilian food prices skyrocketed...

All the contradictions suppressed during the previous forty years of reform exploded all at once after the war.

Factory strikes, peasant uprisings, borderland ethnic separatist movements... From 1909 to 1910, these events occurred almost weekly.

Nicholas II's response was exactly as bloody as Morin imagined— suppression.

He sent the army to crush the largest uprisings, executed a batch of revolutionary leaders, and attempted to restore order through even harsher policies.

But the problem was, issues began surfacing within the army as well.

Dissatisfaction among rank-and-file soldiers and junior officers over the previous war had reached a boiling point. The senior officer corps also began to fracture... some remained loyal to the Tsar, while others secretly colluded with various revolutionary factions.

In Morin's view, the real winner of this war was Kolchak.

His two brilliant performances during the war earned him domestic praise as the "Eagle of Sevastopol" and the "Savior of the Black Sea"...

Even the various revolutionary parties within the Great Rus Empire believed that without Kolchak, the Second Crimean War would have ended in disaster once again.

Therefore, when the revolution broke out in 1910, although Kolchak was still an active-duty naval general, he possessed nationwide prestige.

He didn't immediately take a side, insisting that the military shouldn't intervene in partisan struggles, which further solidified his image as being loyal to "Rus" rather than any specific regime.

Meanwhile, Morin spotted two other familiar names in the information completed by the 【Intelligence】 interface.

Denikin, then a regimental commander in the Caucasus Military District, performed exceptionally well during the land battles and received a double promotion after the war.

Yudenich led reinforcements to Sevastopol during the anti-landing operations, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Kolchak.

These three men had amassed their "initial capital" during this war.

"Looking at it this way..."

Morin couldn't help but sigh. "Why does it feel like these three were guided by destiny?"

Or, put another way, when a massive upheaval approached, they just happened to be standing in the perfect positions.

Morin sat up straight, rolling his neck. The story preceding the fall of the Great Rus Empire was far more complex than he imagined. No wonder this world's "Red and White Song Battle" occurred so many years early.

And then there was the fuse no one had anticipated.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.

In the world before his transmigration, this name represented a charlatan who conned the Tsar's family with parlor tricks and mysticism.

Wild legends surrounded him—curing the Tsarevich's hemophilia, his 28-centimeter "asset," his affairs with noblewomen, his interference in state affairs, and his legendary near-invulnerability when assassinated by nobles...

But in this world of supernatural power, this eccentric figure had a completely different vibe.

The archives indicated that Rasputin first entered the purview of the Rus nobility through his prophetic abilities, which was somewhat similar to the other world.

In the fall of 1908, during a noble salon gathering, he publicly proclaimed that the upcoming winter would be "unprecedentedly cold" and that the northern provinces would suffer a massive crop failure.

At the time, no one took the wandering monk from a Siberian village seriously.

However, that winter, the northern Great Rus Empire indeed experienced its most severe cold wave in fifty years. The winter wheat crop in the middle and upper Volga River regions was nearly wiped out, plunging hundreds of thousands of peasants into famine.

One could be called a coincidence.

But over the next six months, Rasputin successively predicted an earthquake in the Caucasus, severe spring flooding in the Don River basin, and a massive fire in St. Petersburg that destroyed an entire commercial street.

Three hits out of three.

"This can't be explained away as coincidence. It's not like he finished a prophecy and then personally triggered an earthquake..."

Morin flipped through the archives, finding it increasingly fascinating.

In the world before his transmigration, Rasputin's so-called "divine power" was mostly parlor tricks of hypnotism and psychological suggestion.

But this world had magic, spellcasters, and alchemists... A "Holy Fool" truly possessing some supernatural ability sounded much more plausible.

But what truly cemented Rasputin's position before the imperial family was another matter entirely.

Morin turned to the next document—a leaked copy of secret medical records from the Rus court concerning Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich.

The Romanov family, the royal house of the Great Rus Empire, carried varying degrees of spellcaster talent in their bloodline from some unknown generation onward.

This talent, passed down through generations, was a crucial pillar of the legitimacy of their imperial power.

But in Tsarevich Alexei, this inherited talent went horribly wrong.

"Spellplague..."

Morin murmured the word, his finger stopping on the page.

The archives detailed the Tsarevich's symptoms extensively. From birth, the mana within Alexei's body was in a state of chaotic flux, leading to frequent high fevers and convulsions.

In severe cases, unformed mana would even leak from his body, burning those around him.

The Empire's top court mages and alchemists were helpless.

Until Rasputin appeared.

This "Holy Fool" used methods that even the court mages couldn't understand to gradually suppress the mana turbulence within the Tsarevich.

The process took over two months, but ultimately, Alexei's "Spellplague" was completely cured.

Spellplague... This was not an unfamiliar concept to Morin or spellcasters in this world.

In fact, it was precisely because of the "Spellplague" that all spellcasters in this world were forced to specialize in only one school of magic.

Anyone attempting to practice two or more schools simultaneously, especially 3rd-circle spells or higher from different schools, would trigger a conflict of mana within their body...

The only reason Morin himself could utilize spells from multiple schools simultaneously was pure, unadulterated "cheat code" intervention; he was an outlier.

So, seeing that Rasputin actually had the ability to cure the "Spellplague," Morin was somewhat surprised.

"He's got some skills... What exactly is his background?"

Harboring deepening curiosity, Morin continued reading.

After curing the Tsarevich's Spellplague, Rasputin's position within the imperial family became unshakeable.

Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra trusted him to an almost blind degree.

And Rasputin began using this trust to extend his reach into every aspect of the Empire.

With a single word, he could topple high-ranking officials or elevate nobodies to key positions, practically controlling the appointment and dismissal of the Empire's officials.

He even suggested transferring certain military units away from the western border, though this suggestion was ultimately blocked by strong opposition from the military.

What interested Morin most was this "Holy Fool's" interference in foreign affairs.

The archives held an extremely precious document—a memorandum written by a military attaché of the Saxon Embassy in St. Petersburg, detailing a brief conversation he had the fortune of having with Rasputin at a diplomatic reception in late 1909.

Morin pulled the memorandum from the folder. The handwriting was neat, clearly a formalized copy.

"...This man is large in stature, sporting a thick, long beard. His complexion is ruddy, and his hands are rough and strong—clearly the hands of a man accustomed to years of manual labor, not a pampered noble."

"His train of thought during conversation is extremely clear, vastly different from the 'mad' image portrayed by outside rumors..."

"...When discussing Imperial diplomacy, this man explicitly stated that Greater Rus should maintain friendly relations with the Saxon Empire and remain vigilant against the Britannians."

"His exact words were: 'The people of the island nation will never genuinely help any continental country. They only want everyone to slaughter each other so they can reap the benefits...'"

Morin raised an eyebrow. At the very least, his assessment of the Britannians was quite accurate.

He continued reading.

"...This man then suddenly lowered his voice and spoke a rather chilling prophecy."

"He claimed that in the near future, an unprecedented great war will sweep across the entire continent of Europa, dragging every empire into it... The scale of this war will far exceed any conflict in the past century..."

"...When I pressed him on what would trigger this great war, this man fell silent for a long time. Finally, he stated vaguely that the 'pivot point' of the world's geopolitical situation would begin in the South, in the city where orange blossoms bloom..."

The following pages contained an analysis report of this prophecy by the Saxon Empire's intelligence department, dated January 1910.

Barely a month later, the revolution erupted in the Great Rus Empire.

Following Rasputin's death, efforts to verify his prophecy were shelved.

Four years later, in June 1914, the Sarajevo incident detonated the Great European War.

Sarajevo... That city was in the Balkan Peninsula. Strictly speaking, it was indeed in the "South," but it had absolutely nothing to do with "orange blossoms."

So, after the war broke out, the Third Department of the Army General Staff solemnly pulled this old file out again. Their final conclusion was—

Rasputin's prophecy merely got lucky in predicting a "great war," but his specific location was complete nonsense.

"Is it really complete nonsense...?"

Morin set down the analysis report and picked up the military attaché's memorandum again.

Then, at the very bottom of the folder, he found an additional explanatory note.

It was appended by an intelligence analyst during filing, dated about two months after the analysis report.

The note contained only one sentence: "Upon further confirmation in a follow-up inquiry, the military attaché recalled that Rasputin's complete phrasing at the time was 'the city of orange blossoms and blood.'"

"Combining geographical, cultural, and historical analysis, the city that best fits this description is: Seville, Kingdom of Aragon."

Morin's hand stopped moving.

This is where his fucking dream began.

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