News about typhoons can be a matter of life and death, so I'd like to figure out
something... I thought.
As I was thinking about that, I heard a sudden sigh.
"To think they'd use the Jewel Voice Broadcast like this..."
In front of me, a girl dressed like an adventurer stood with her back facing me.
She stood with her back straight, her airy golden ponytail swaying behind her. For a
moment, I thought she looked a lot like Liscia, but this girl had her hair tied back in a
higher position, and Liscia's hair was medium-short now. The girl turned to show
me her pretty face in profile.
"We absolutely must implement this system in our country," she said. "When I
return, I'll draw up a proposal for it. Still, just how would you come up with such an
advanced idea?"
She asked me that with a straight face.
What's this, out of nowhere? I was thinking, when Juna stood up beside me. Then
she placed herself between the girl and me.
"Juna?" I asked.
"Be careful," Juna cautioned as she stood there to protect me. She had a grim look
on her face, and it was apparent from her tone of voice that she was worried. "This
girl is an accomplished warrior. It's regrettable that Aisha isn't here. Even if I were
ready to die taking her down, I don't know that I could stop her..."
"Is she that strong?" I asked.
Seeing the cautious reaction from Juna, the girl with the ponytail grinned. "You
needn't worry, I have no hostile intent, Lorelei Juna Doma."
Juna inhaled sharply. "You know me..."
"Of course," she said. "I approached you because I'm aware of who you are. We
have agents of our own, after all."
That means she knows who I am, too, huh, I thought.
She must have planned to make contact here knowing that I would be coming in
disguise. This had happened because the establishment of an intelligence corps for
the kingdom had been delayed by my doubts in the personnel I had to run it.
But, if she says she has no hostile intent...
"You're with the Empire?" I asked.
"Yes," the girl said, bringing a hand to her chest and bowing her head. "It's a
pleasure to meet you, Sir Souma Kazuya. I am the younger sister of Empress Maria
Euphoria of the Gran Chaos Empire, and the one who handles military affairs in her
stead, Jeanne Euphoria."
I whispered to Juna, "What happened to our guards?"
"It seems she has guards of her own, so they can't move," answered Juna.
"That would be why she came alone, huh," I said. "...Take care of Tomoe for me."
I left Tomoe, who was groggy from being suddenly shaken awake, with Juna and
stood facing Jeanne Euphoria. She had been in the reports I'd received. There was a
princess who handled military affairs under the Saint of the Empire, Empress Maria
Euphoria; and, as Maria was currently unwed, she was also the first in the line of
succession. This must be her sister, I reasoned.
"Does Madam Maria's younger sister have some business in our country?" I
asked.
I made a point of talking down to her. Because our country hadn't signed the
Mankind Declaration, I didn't have to pay respects to Empress Maria as my leader. In
other words, as both of us were leaders of independent nations, my rank was equal
to Maria's. And seeing as Jeanne was the younger sister of the empress, her rank was
that of a vassal, and so I was above her. I had no desire to put on airs with my own
vassals, but when dealing with foreigners, it was important that our positions be
made clear.
Jeanne responded as if that were perfectly natural. "No particular business. I
simply wished to see how the person I'll be negotiating with rules for myself, but my
agents received information that you would be sneaking into the castle town today,
so I thought I might as well come introduce myself."
So she hadn't originally planned to meet me. She'd just happened to learn I was
taking a day off while she was here, so she'd attempted to make contact.
"Still, it was quite bold of you to come into Van while we're occupying it," I said.
"I'm the type that only believes what she's seen with her own two eyes, after all,"
Jeanne replied. "The rumors about you have reached as far as the Empire, many of
them unsubstantiated, so I wanted to find out for myself."
Rumors? There are rumors about me in the Empire? I thought.
"What sort of rumors would those be?" I asked.
"They say things like: you're 'the brilliant ruler who rescued an economy on the
brink of collapse,' or that you 'invented ways of preparing foods that there had been
no custom of eating before and saved the country from a food crisis,' or that you
'demonstrated unparalleled strength in battle, mowing down swarms of enemies
one after another'... and more."
"There's been a lot of embellishment along the way, huh," I commented.
Not one of those things had been accomplished by my strength alone. The
economic restructuring had been the bureaucrats' hard work, and gathering the
ingredients and teaching us how to prepare them had been Poncho's
accomplishment. As for the war, I'd only set the armies in motion, then left the
fighting to stronger people. In the end, if you were to name one thing I'd done, "I
delegated tasks to people who could handle them" would be it.
"Oh, and there were rumors that you were an 'insatiable sex fiend,' too," Jeanne
added.
"Wait, hold on!"
Who're you calling a sex fiend?!
"Where did those rumors come from?!" I exclaimed.
"The rumor says: 'Despite being betrothed to the beautiful daughter of the
former king, he gathered beauties from around the kingdom to select a concubine,'
or something like that. Is Madam Juna here not the one chosen to be your
concubine?"
What a horrible misunderstanding! They must have been talking about the
Elfrieden Pretty Girl Grand Prix I'd run as part of my search for talented personnel.
When I'd said I was searching for people with any gift, there had been a lot of
applications in the fields of martial arts, beauty, and arts. All I'd done was create a
tournament format for them to compete in.
I hadn't even come up with the plan for Project Lorelei at that point. Come to
think of it, at the time there had been rumors that "The beauty tournament might be
for the king to find mistresses," and the nobles had all tried to send their relatives to
participate. Had other countries seen it the same way?
"A-A concubine, am I...? Well, yes, I did know there were rumors to that effect,"
Juna said, her face turning red.
Was she serious?
I hadn't known there were rumors like that... and it was kind of hard to accept it.
Ever since I had taken the throne, I had been struggling under such a murderous
workload that even my relations with Liscia had stayed completely chaste. Actually,
it was a bit late to say this now, but my relationship with Liscia had skipped over a
lot of important steps, hadn't it? We were betrothed to be married, and yet we
hadn't even been on a proper date, let alone kissed.
While I was thinking about all that, Jeanne looked at me pensively. "Hm... If that
rumor was false, I suppose I can't use that method."
"What method?" I asked.
"Well, if you were a lecherous king, I thought if I had my gorgeous sister welcome
you and ask really nicely, you might accept our requests quite easily."
"What were you planning to make the Saint of the Empire do?!" I yelped.
"It seems my sister is not overly fond of that 'saint' title, but... maybe men find her
being a 'saint' quite appealing?" she asked.
"Well... I can sort of see that," I said. "The Saint of the Empire, Maria"... The words
themselves had an incredible impact. For one thing, if a woman is being called a
saint, it makes you want to see her. It raises the expectation that she's beautiful and
noble.
...Wait, I had that title of "hero," too, now that I thought about it. Even though I'd
been summoned as a hero from another world, I hadn't done anything particularly
heroic, so I'd totally forgotten.
"Titles, hm?" Juna asked. "Do you think they find 'lorelei' appealing, too?"
"Why are you getting in on this, Juna?!" I cried.
"Oh, no... I just wondered..."
Jeanne giggled. "Hee hee! You're more fun than I thought you'd be."
Jeanne was watching us banter with a smile.
"We're not doing it because we want to amuse you, though," I said.
"No, no, the closeness between you and your vassals is a mark of the stability in
your country, I'm sure," she said. "We couldn't get away with that back home."
"...It's different in the Empire?" I asked.
"Our territory is needlessly large, and the empress's power is great," said Jeanne.
"They call her a saint and half-worship her, so everyone is very reserved around her.
About the only people she has that she can talk with casually are our family. On top
of that, my sister takes being an empress entirely too seriously, so she tries to treat
everyone equally, which leaves her in a position where she can't open up to anyone."
Jeanne shrugged her shoulders and looked at the crowd in the plaza.
"It was the same with this. Even though there's no benefit to us in helping
Amidonia after they ignored the Mankind Declaration..."
"For the younger sister of Madam Maria, with all the ideals she tries to uphold,
you take an awfully realistic perspective," I said.
"If the elder sister is a dreamer, the younger needs to be firmly grounded," Jeanne
said with a wry smile.
Hm... It felt like Jeanne was closer to my way of thinking than Maria. Instead of
embracing lofty ideals, she was the sort who could come up with pragmatic
solutions.
When you hold up ideals, people gather around you. However, if you hold up
those ideals for too long, sooner or later, you lose your path. Someone has to be
there to keep an eye on the ground in front of you. Having the more realistic Jeanne
by her side must have been what let Maria keep holding up her ideals.
The Empire had the largest population on the continent. I didn't know how many
extremely talented people they had there, but in terms of relative numbers, they
must have had far more than my country.
Jeanne pointed to image of Chris projected in the air above us. "By the way, that's
an incredible way of using the Jewel Voice Broadcast. By releasing information
regularly, you use it to help alleviate the fears of your people. Do you mind if we do
the same back home?"
"...Do as you please," I said.
I mean, it wasn't like it would be hard to imitate. It wasn't something I could
forbid her from doing, either.
"Thank you," said Jeanne. "How do you come up with such advanced ideas?"
"This is advanced?" I asked. "It was pretty normal in the world I came from."
"The world you came from... Of course." Jeanne's smile suddenly vanished.
As I was wondering what was up, Jeanne straightened her posture and bowed
deeply. She bent over until her hips were at a right angle. It was a deep enough bow
that, if the custom existed in this world, she might have done a formal kowtow
instead.
I was befuddled by her suddenly lower profile. "Wh-What's wrong? This is so
sudden."
"You've been horribly inconvenienced because of us," said Jeanne. "In my absent
sister's place, I apologize."
"You're apologizing?" I asked, startled.
When Jeanne raised her face, she bore a pained expression. "This is about the
hero summoning. It was our request that caused the Elfrieden Kingdom to summon
you to this world. My sister Maria deeply regrets that you, who had done us no
wrong, were cut off from your homeland and called to this world. Please, forgive us."
With those words, Jeanne lowered her head once more.
...Oh, is that all? I thought.
"Raise your head. It's all in the past."
"But..." she said.
"Yeah, at first, I was mad, and I worked my hardest not to get turned over to the
Empire," I said. "Now, though... when I think about it more calmly, the Empire has no
reason to want a hero."
At first, I thought they'd wanted a hero to fight back against the threat of the
Demon Lord's Domain, but the more I came to understand this world, the more I
realized that probably hadn't been it.
Right now, the Demon Lord's Domain had stopped expanding. The expansion of
the border meant that the monsters that came south were spread further, and the
various countries could handle them. It was a stalemate; with neither side able to
push forward, the situation was more or less stable.
In other words, the Empire wasn't in a situation where it would want a hero. A
superpower like the Empire had had no need to cling to a summoning ritual that the
kingdom itself wouldn't have been sure they could pull off in the first place.
Besides, when they'd summoned a hero, they'd gotten me.